Lorna McIntosh

RSA Born: 1974

Lorna McIntosh studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating with a BA Hons in 1995 and an MFA in 1997 and was elected as a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 2012. She has won numerous awards, including the John Kinross (1997) and Salvesen (2002) travel scholarships from the Royal Scottish Academy. In 2011, a Residencies for Scotland Award from the RSA/Creative Scotland allowed Lorna to spend three months as artist-in-residence at Balmungo House by St Andrews, the former base of the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust.

“My work relates to ideology from the 17th and 18th Centuries. The work, although highly personal, is informed by my research which encompasses the work of Goethe; 18th Century chemistry; early paleontology; mineralogy and emblematics. I explore the connections and affinities between my different areas of research and issues of a more personal nature. The resulting work has layers of meaning – personal, philosophical and relating to the physical world.”

These three works primarily relate to research into early natural philosophy – in particular, Francis Bacon’s 17th Century work ‘Novum Organum’ – and its connections to other areas of McIntosh’s research, including Goethe’s ‘Elective Affinities’. Bacon viewed nature as a labyrinth through which science could provide a pathway: “A method rightly ordered leads by an unbroken route through the woods of experience to the open ground of axioms”

Public Collections include:

Royal Academy, London; Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture, Edinburgh; Edinburgh College of Art; Art in Healthcare, Edinburgh; Alastair Salvesen Trust