William Irvine

William Irvine Biography

William Irvine (b.1931) has established himself over the past sixty-plus years as a Scottish/American and Maine master, known for his seascapes, as well as his enchanting figurative paintings, and still lifes.

Irvine was born in Troon, a small coastal village on the Atlantic coast of Scotland. He was captivated by art as a young boy and majored in art at Marr College, a progressive secondary school in Troon. When the family of whiskey magnate Johnnie Walker heard about two budding artists at Marr (Irvine and his best friend William Crozier), they invited the boys for a private viewing of Walker’s art collection. This was Irvine’s first opportunity to see paintings that were not reproductions but originals by the masters. Irvine went on to graduate with a degree in drawing and painting from the Glasgow School of Art in 1953. After serving in the Scottish army, he came of age in London where he and Crozier were abstract painters living in Soho and part of a lively avant-garde art scene. During his ten years there, Irvine exhibited in many galleries, including one-man shows at the Drian Gallery and the Parton Gallery. In 1960, he met and married Stephanie Schram, an American student studying in London.

In 1968, the young couple moved to downeast Maine. Irvine was immediately drawn to the fishing villages of Corea and Jonesport, whose tidy houses reminded him of the white farms dotting the green hills of Scotland. Here, harbor, boats, islands and the sea and sky, inspired bold work fueled by two driving forces: abstraction and representation.

Maine proved to be a turning point. Irvine combined abstraction with figurative work, producing bold new seascapes, landscapes, narrative scenes, and still lifes. He used his poetic sensibility and the richness of his textural compositions to bring these antithetical elements into balance. Irvine believes “Every artist is born with a small set of poems, and it is the exploration of that personal mythology that defines him as an artist.” His paintings of the men and women living and working in these coastal villages, as well as his experimental seascapes became lifelong themes.

A few years later, Irvine and Stephanie bought a house in Blue Hill, Maine, and the old attached barn became Irvine’s studio for the next forty-two years. In 1985, Stephanie died after a long illness. Irvine married Margery Wilson in 1995. They built a house and studio on the shore overlooking the sea in Brooklin, Maine. Living in such close proximity to the ocean provides Irvine with daily sources of inspiration.

Marshall Wilkes published two books on Irvine’s work: William Irvine: A Painter’s Journey by Carl Little (2014); and William Irvine: At Home (2018), a collection of Irvine’s small white house paintings. During the covid pandemic, Whisky Wolf Media produced a documentary on the Irvine’s life.  The film William Irvine: A Life Behind the Canvas premiered at The Grand in Ellsworth in 2023, and aired on Maine Public Television in the spring and fall of 2024.

“From the beginning, Irvine’s Maine paintings had a reductive and fundamental sensibility. Their apparent elemental simplicity makes them accessible. They are, after all, very easy to look at. But this is precisely because of the work Irvine does to bring into balance their two driving forces: abstraction and representation . . . . The result is that Irvine can create dense surfaces featuring a slow and luxurious materiality that fuels the elemental intensity of the underlying geometric forms and overall composition.”

—Daniel Kany

Videos