You will most likely know Alexander McCall Smith as the ingenious and inexhaustible author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series or any number of his more than 80 other titles, but it was art that brought McCall Smith to Maldon last weekend.
The cherished Cascade Gallery is currently showing the work of the entrancing and prolific artist Robert Maclaurin. Maclaurin is a contemporary landscape painter admired for the way he captures light and mesmerises with colour in his depictions of dramatic vistas from Mount Alexander Shire, his home of more than 15 years, as well as his native Scotland.
And McCall Smith is an avid admirer – but they were yet to meet.
“Robert first came to my attention after winning the Noble Grossart Scottish Painting Prize,” McCall stated. That was back in 1998, while the award itself can be likened to winning the Archibald Prize. He had to wait a further 20 years to buy a similar piece to the one that had ignited his imagination years before. “His landscapes made an enduring impression on me, and I thought about them long after the exhibition, which is an unusual thing for a landscape painting. I find them haunting.”
Maclaurin himself wasn’t aware that McCall Smith even owned a piece, let alone called himself an admirer until more recently. A friend of Maclaurin’s heard a BBC interview recorded during Covid, discussing eight treasured personal objects belonging to McCall Smith, one of which is his very own Maclaurin painting, Across the Plateau. The full wall size work depicts a landscape from the Kimberley featuring, as McCall Smith states, “a very large number of baobab trees, all very conveniently placed – that’s artistic licence. It’s the way they should have been.”
“When I take people into that room, they’re simply blown away by the painting. I can look at it for hours.” A generous and eloquent tower of a man, McCall Smith is the epitome of a gentleman, singing the praises of Maclaurin’s work. Maclaurin was all but blushing.
You can see the common ground for mutual admiration across the different disciplines. Both artists have fiercely dedicated routines. Maclaurin is a huge believer in training as the groundwork for an arts practice, while McCall Smith has a strict writing regime, even when on the road, “You do not wait for the muse to come to you.”
Maclaurin currently boasts more than 50 pieces on show at the Cascade Gallery, while a further 20 or so works feature in a joint exhibition with his sometimes-painting companion Kynan Sutherland at the Gippsland Art Gallery. The total is the culmination of only two and a half years of work.
Location takes centre stage in McCall Smith’s stories, with place becoming a character itself, while Maclaurin’s paintings are renowned for their way of transporting viewers to another, more magical world. The beauty and the romance of Scotland are also deeply important to them both.
“Painting Scotland was a form of therapy during Covid” Maclaurin says, while prohibited from returning to visit his far-flung former home. The Australian landscapes painted during that time are all scenes from within a five-kilometre radius of Castlemaine. Locals of the Shire will recognise the immense granite boulders of Dog Rocks and other familiar settings.
With an abiding love for new horizons and experiences, it’s easy to see the well that McCall Smith draws from to conjure new worlds and fill them to the brim with endearing characters. McCall Smith’s writing can be considered vast and expansive. Maclaurin’s landscapes are deep and contemplative – and vice versa. It’s only fitting that they should be mutually admiring of each other’s life work.
Two immensely imaginative and intelligent men at the pinnacle of their respective fields met in mutual admiration for each other’s artistry. Well met, indeed.
This article appeared in the Tarrangower Times, 24 March 2023.
