Will Maclean was born in Inverness and worked as a midshipman on HMS Conway at Anglesey, Wales, before attending Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, during the early 1960s. Maclean taught art at several schools in Fife before being appointed lecturer at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, where he was made Professor of Fine Art in 1994. He was elected Royal Scottish Academician in 1991 and as part of a team, designed and won the Scottish Natural heritage Supreme Award for three Memorial Cairns in Lewis in 1997.
The art critic and writer Duncan MacMillan has written of the artist that “his art is rooted in his knowledge of the Highlands, the Highland people and their history and in his own early associations with sailors and the sea.” Much of his work takes inspiration from his own time spent at sea, particularly his Ring-Net Project, which includes a body of over 400 drawings now held at the Scottish National Gallery of Art, Edinburgh.
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