David Maclagan is a writer, artist, lecturer and retired art therapist, living in Gloucestershire. He has published numerous articles on Outsider Art, art and imagination and psychological aesthetics

About me

About me

I am both an artist and a writer: since I write about the image, its psychology and its aesthetics, this is a bit like running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, yet I can usually manage to switch readily between the two.

After a conventional academic education (Winchester & Christ Church), I got into the R.C.A. Painting School by special dispensation. For ten years after that I taught (part time) both the history and the practice of art; then I trained as an art therapist and worked for five years in a therapeutic community. Finally I was a full-time lecturer in the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies at Sheffield until I retired in 2005. I have published many articles on psychoanalysis, imagination and the image, and, if pushed, would call my orientation post-Jungian (owing much to the late James Hillman).

For forty years I have maintained a consistent practice as an artist, and have had eight one-man shows (mainly in university galleries) in the past twelve years. My work is also in a number of private collections both here and abroad. For the last twenty years I have kept to the same scale and format, using the same materials, so its evolution can be followed very easily.