William Mackinnon

Born into a family of artists, Mackinnon uses painting to interrogate personal experience, identity, and belonging. Though he has worked from his Ibiza studio for the past 15 years, his paintings retain a distinctly Australian sensibility. After training in London, Mackinnon found European influences removed from the culture and history of his homeland. Supported by a Travelling Fellowship, he journeyed to the remote Papunya Tula Art Centre in Central Australia, working alongside renowned First Nations artists. Immersed in a 40,000-year-old culture still marked by the “open wound of colonisation,” he encountered Australia’s past with new depth and immediacy. Much of Mackinnon’s work since has explored what he calls “psychological landscapes”: luminous, introspective scenes where emotion and observation intertwine. His later paintings—lonely roads, empty pools, nocturnal drives— merge memory, photography, and sketch into layered collages. Working in oils, automotive enamel, and glitter, he builds texture and light into moody, meditative spaces that invite viewers to navigate the terrain between memory and reality. 

Mackinnon holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne, a Postgraduate Diploma from Chelsea School of Art and Design (2006), and a Master of Visual Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts (2008).