John MacGregor (artist)
John MacGregor (1942-2019) was an artist, known for his paintings, prints and sculptures, and as a member of the Isaacs Gallery Group in Toronto. Career John MacGregor, was born in England, and came to Canada as a child, in 1948. His family lived in Timmins for two years before moving to Toronto, Ontario. He was trained at Central Technical School in Toronto and held his first solo show in 1967 at Toronto`s Hart House Gallery (today, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, part of the Art Museum, University of Toronto). Critics focused on his use in his early work of familiar objects to draw sexual analogies that were considered fascinating but humorous. He had subsequent shows at the Isaacs Gallery, to which he was introduced by Gordon Rayner and Graham Coughtry, featuring sculptured wood fantasies such as an arching door. In 1993, he said about his work: “I do uncommon things with mundane objects to tantalize, amuse and finally communicate”. By the mid-1970s, he had turned to abstraction believing it gave him the freedom to think and act differently. Critics often praised his colour-saturated abstract work, calling it a "delight". One of them even described the canvases as having a "Matissian flatness".