Ben MacGregor is a self-taught artist based in London. Born in 1979, he grew up in Surrey and worked as a TV graphic designer for five years from 1999 before travelling to Nigeria in 2007 to work in maritime security. It was a role that took him to remote locations across the country, and on to other West African countries including Sierra Leone, Ghana and Ivory Coast. Returning to London in 2015 and contemplating his next steps, he rediscovered a childhood love of painting.

A turning point came in 2022, when MacGregor founded high-end bespoke furniture company Nicholson Nash. Working with the materials of craft helped his painting style to evolve. Textures and finishes of paintings are influenced by experiments and trial and error processes in the furniture workshop. These moments are now integral no his artistic practice.

Without art school training, MacGregor has also developed his painting skills through studying past painters in detail. A regular at the National Gallery and the Cortauld in London, he is inspired by the post-impressionists, with Gaughin, Van Gogh and Rousseau as his particular favourites. Other influences are more contemporary – ranging from the colour of David Hockney to the texture and richness of paintings by Dana Schutz and Adrian Ghenie.

Like his influences, McGregor is interested in abstraction as a way to break the conventional rules of painting and push boundaries. But, in a similar way, often with landscapes in focus, that is fuelled by nature. In his hands, the textures of sand dunes or the different greens of woods can form abstract patterns on a canvas. In addition to this, sights of everyday life – whether that's Jack Russells or garden chairs – make their way into his paintings.

Using traditional oil paint and a textural brush style for a painterly take on mark making, this is backed up with more contemporary techniques too. Inspired by his work with materials for Nicholson Nash, canvases are prepared using spraying techniques. Bringing a super-smooth finish to the canvas, the texture of paint is amplified, with the sheen of the canvas sometimes glimpsed through the oils.

MacGregor has been recognised for his landscape painting – particularly through the Sky Arts Landscape of the Year competition. He first entered with his painting Bluebells in 2021, making it to the semi-finals. He has continued to compete, and was most recently a part of the 2024 series.