Hamish Mackie is a British wildlife sculptor whose bronze works are distinguished by their combination of close anatomical study and spontaneous, fluid handling of material. Largely self-taught, he works in confident, often unrepeatable gestures that give his sculptures a sense of caught movement and inner life. His approach varies deliberately with the subject: large sweeping strokes for power
and drama, finer detail where character demands it. Each piece is cast using the lost wax method in bronze, stainless steel, silver, or occasionally gold as a limited edition, signed, dated, and numbered. The process from sculpting through moulding to casting takes an average of four months. Art critic Edward Lucie-Smith has described his work as informed by ancient Egyptian and Renaissance sculpture through to the realism of Barye and Bugatti.
His public commissions include the Goodman's Fields Horses for Berkeley Homes in the City of London, six life and quarter size horses unveiled in 2015, which won the Public Monuments and Sculptures Association's Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Fountains. His works are held in public and private collections around the world, and he has held six solo shows at Mall Galleries in London.
Born in 1973 in Cornwall and raised on a livestock farm, Mackie made his first bronze sculpture at the age of twelve. He studied at Radley College and Falmouth School of Art before going on to read design at Kingston University, and began sculpting full time in 1996. He has since travelled to Antarctica, Africa, Australia, India, the Falkland Islands, and across Europe to observe wildlife at first hand, a practice he considers central to his work. He lives and works in Oxfordshire.
