About Me

Philip McLaren is a Kamilaroi Australian, both his parents are Aboriginal from Coonabarabran, but he was born in the inner Sydney suburb of Redfern. He has been a Scenic Art Director and Illustrator/Graphic Designer in television, advertising and film. He spent 12 years living abroad. Parallel to his varied career he painted and sculpted, exhibiting in London, Toronto, Vancouver, The Bahamas, Wellington and Sydney.

He attended the National Art School in Sydney and spent his early years camping and painting landscapes in the outback. He did representational artwork as an illustrator but experimented with Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and embraced the desert art of the Utopia-Sandover and Yirrkala regions of the Northern Territory.

Philip is a Doctor of Creative Arts and lectures at University of the Sunshine Coast. He is also an internationally published author. In his current postmodern expressions he is enjoying an original line of Dhuwi meditations: Dhuwi is our travelling night spirits or soul; original real Ground Painting, this is a homage to desert sand painters; collages ala Yirrkala art and deconstructed vertical Melville Island Pukumani totem art.