Studio Visit: Chris Hugh Mackenzie

Chris Hugh Mackenzie is one of the most striking painters of his generation. He visions the site of painting as one of transcultural enquiry, fashioning luminous cartographies that are filled with myriad forms of symbolism and communal memory. He describes his intention as a wish to evoke the same feelings as those of “souvenirs or postcards”—pictures that play between intentions of reality and the scope of the human imagination. 

Born in the 1980s, he studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, and now lives in Ayr with his family, where he teaches fine art at Ayrshire College. In this penultimate episode of Season 1 of Studio Visit, Professor Omar Kholeif visits Chris at home and in his studio, exploring how inspiration is gleaned; he enters into his family constellation, and dreams of a world whereby they could live in each other’s paintings—away from the gentrification of the city, in the warmth and communion of budding friendship. They share in the kinship of shared ideals that art can make the world a better place.

Chris Hugh Mackenzie has exhibited in venues such as Red Door Gallery, Edinburgh; Inchmore Galleries, Inverness; Harbour Arts Centre, Irvine; and was the subject of a major survey exhibition entitled Hold Utopia in 2025-2026 held at Rozelle House Museum and Galleries, Ayrshire. Several new works, which are discussed on this podcast will feature in the international traveling exhibition, Dreamwork: Ancestors Echo in the House of Tomorrow, which opens at the Contemporary Art Museum: Helga De Alvear, Cáceres, Spain in November 2026, and is developed in collaboration with MAAT—Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon, among other venues. 

Studio Visit is an artPost21 Production in association with Tabari.

Theme Tune: Stellar’s Sea Cow by CleckHuddersfax (Courtesy of our friend, Lawrence Abu Hamdan)

Produced by Levin Haegele with Omar Kholeif.

Hosted by Dr Omar Kholeif.