Award-winning author, painter and metal sculptor Guillermo MacLean, known as Mac Lean in art circles, moved to Powell River with his wife, Sandra Lopez, in the spring. His visual work is described as abstract, expressionist and organic. MacLean’s sculpting is architecturally inspired and functional, such as tables and chairs, and his paintings are abstract/expressionist. A major showing of MacLean’s works are on display at 32 Lakes Coffee Roasters and Café in Townsite until October 14.
What do you remember from your childhood that influenced your art?
When I was seven years old, I made all of my toys, because my family was very poor. My father, a Scottish guy and a dentist in a small town, had eight kids, so I didn’t have money to buy toys. My father gave me a hammer and wood from boxes for tomatoes and the like. He brought me those empty boxes and said, “Make your toys.”
How do you compare that with the sculpture you do today?
What I do is add, to the contrary of another sculptor who removes, such as from a big stone. All my life I have added in the sense that now, when I weld, I put things together.
Which do you prefer, painting, sculpting or writing?
My wife is the sculptor, my true lover. You have to have only one lover, but sometimes you have to have two, so my two lovers are Sandra and my painting.
Who has influenced you as an artist?
There are so many. Some of them have influenced me in an aesthetic way. If I have to choose one, it is my friend Anthony Caro [a modernist abstract-metal sculptor], who made me look at the way you confront art. He was an important and major artist in England. Anthony died three years ago. His influence on me was in the sense of how you confront art as a human being; from the heart. I learned from him the process. Maybe in your life you do 10 things and you make eight that are terrible, but two that are beautiful; that is part of the process.
What is art?
Art is liberty. It’s freedom.
For more information, go to macleansteel.com.
