Moira Macgregor

Moira Macgregor (1931-2016) was an artist and designer from Dundee, best known for her fashion illustration (particularly for Biba) and her drawings and paintings of fruit.
== Early Life ==
Moira Macgregor was born in Dundee in 1931. In 1949, she enrolled at Dundee College of Art, now Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. She studied drawing and painting under Alberto Morrocco. One of her fellow students, David Walker, remembers her “absolute mastery of figure drawing, as well as her tremendous force of personality”.The Moira Macgregor Bequest – Biba and Beyond (2020) YouTube Video, added by UoD Museums [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsQBXdCIctQ
On graduating in 1954, Macgregor was awarded a traveling scholarship, along with design student Kathleen Mowat, which took them to Rome and Florence.
== Career ==
After she returned to Dundee, Macgregor did some early fashion illustrations for Dundee newspapers but decided to go to teacher training college and then taught art in primary school for two yearsMoira Macgregor – Tribute to Moira. (2016) Available at: Moira Macgregor Eulogy. However she was determined to pursue a career in the world of fashion. She moved to London but soon found herself with a job in Amsterdam, working as a fashion artist with the clothing company C&A in 1958-59.
Returning to London, a new phase of her career began in the early 60s when she was employed by the Helen Jardine Artists Studio in Covent Garden; here she made several lifelong friends, including the Polish-born designer Barbara Hulanicki. In 1963, Hulanicki founded Biba as a mail-order fashion business. Macgregor was asked to illustrate the Biba designs for the mail-order catalogues and other promotional materials. Unlike other boutiques, Biba fashions were designed to be affordable by ordinary working girls and, in just a few years, Biba became known as the in place to be in swinging London. The famous Biba logo was created by the graphic designer John McConnell, who would become Macgregor’s husband.
In 1965, she created the feature "Capable Kate" for Honey (magazine). Kate was a confident, stylish, and thrifty teenager who tells her readers how to follow current trends on a budget by transforming existing clothes or sewing their own garments from scratch.
Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Macgregor worked as illustrator, editor, and design correspondent for a variety of lifestyle magazines, including London-based Nova and the New York-based Glamour (magazine). Macgregor often incorporated Art Nouveau designs into her work, a style which had come back into fashion at that time partly because of its use by Biba.
== Family ==
Macgregor and John McConnell had met through a mutual friend from Dundee. They married in 1963. Their two children, Sam and Kate, were born in 1966 and 1969 respectively, but at a time when it was still common for married women to give up their jobs, Macgregor continued to work as her fashion illustrations became much in demand. Wherever she was based, Macgregor had a studio and continued to work both for herself and commercially.
In the late 1970s Moira and John bought a large farmhouse in a 12th Century Bastide called Montjoi in France. They went every year for their summer holidays. Macgregor did a lot of painting there and made friends with the local families.
== Later Life & Work ==
In the 1980s and 90, Macgregor's focus shifted away from fashion and on to illustration for advertising, book publishing, and packaging. She worked for several major brands, including Clarks. This gave her the opportunity to work with her husband, who created Clarks' distinctive new branding.
At a time when photography had almost completely taken over in publications of cookery books, Macgregor's exquisitely crafted illustrations bring an entirely different dimension to the book. Macgregor became particularly well-known for her illustrations of fruit, which were the result of a rigorous and lengthy study process. Sometimes she would add the sticky labels from the individual pieces of fruit next to her sketch to remind herself of the exact variety.
As well as her commercial work, Macgregor also created art for herself. In the 1980s, she began to exhibit her paintings at the Royal Academy of Arts|Royal Academy, the Royal Watercolour Society, and many other galleries. She was proud of her Scottish heritage as a Macgregor and all her watercolours, prints and oil paintings were as Moira Macgregor with her distinctive MM logo. Fruit continued to be the subject she used in order to experiment with different styles, gradually simplifying her compositions, distilling the subject to its bare essentials. A note in the back of one of her sketchbooks reads: "Paint the essence, avoiding the tyranny of description." This culminated in a set of screen prints in 1992, which feature almost abstract compositions of geometric forms in strong blocks of colour. By contrast, the series of paintings she produced in the 2000s reduced colour to a minimum, focusing on a single object, such as a jug on a table. These were exhibited in a solo exhibition in 2011.
== Exhibitions ==
1984 Mixed Exhibition Cadogan Gallery Spring Show
1987 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 
1995 & 1998 Solo Exhibitions at Pentagram Gallery
2008 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
2011 Retrospective at England & Co Gallery
2018 Moira MacGregor: A Life in Style Exhibition at the University of Dundee.Moira Macgregor (2016) Available at: Moira Macgregor Artist
== Legacy ==
Macgregor died in 2016, and, in accordance with her wishes, her family donated a collection of over 500 drawings, paintings, prints, and proofs to the University of Dundee. The collection reveals the process that she went through in creating work, through sketches, collages, and multiple variations. A series of sketchbooks from throughout her career also provides a unique insight into the development of her artistic practice.
According to the eulogy read at Macgregor’s funeral, “she left at a good time for her and without the descent into old age and infirmity she dreaded. Her biggest fear was to be cared for and dressed in the wrong clothes. Her creative life, her artistic expression, and her mind remained undimmed, and despite failing eyesight, she continued to paint and work with collage”.
Category:1931 births
Category:2016 deaths
Category:Scottish artists
Category:Scottish designers