Jean Macalpine, the Menorca-based artist, studied Fine Art at Bristol College of Art and Camberwell College of Art, London.
At this time her main medium was printmaking, in particular etching, and although she used photography as a reference, it wasn’t until after leaving college that she converted to photography.
Macalpine’s passion for landscape has been constant as she searches for the sense of formality created by structure, texture and light, enhanced by the subtle hand colouring of the black and white image.
“Macalpine’s work is a realisation of her sensations of landscape. Her aims are to do with Fine Art: her interests lie in formality and ambiguity, in light and atmosphere, all of which are Fine Art concerns. She regards herself as an artist who happens to use the photographic medium, … For her the camera is simply a tool towards the finished work which is so finely tuned that one is aware primarily of the image and only secondly of the medium.” -- “Intervals in Light” by Mary Rose Beaumont.
More recently she has been studying marks and textures on flat two-dimensional surfaces such as old walls or doors, which she transmutes into the suggestion or memory of landscape. The marks and textures in question resemble found objects but their colour is altered to enhance the feeling of space and distance.
Two years ago Macalpine changed from a traditional darkroom medium to working digitally. | 
