Born in Scotland, he served in the Royal Artillery before entering Edinburgh College of Art in 1956. He was the winner of the Andrew Grant Scholarship in 1960, which enabled him to travel in Europe, and after a further period of travel in the USA he joined the staff of Hornsey College of Art, London, as a visiting lecturer. Among his early public commissions are several pre-cast abstract concrete murals for buildings, such as the former Ordnance Survey HQ at Maybush in Southampton (1969), and the former Strathclyde House in Glasgow (1978). The majority of his free-standing outdoor sculptures are in bronze, with the approach ranging from an exploration of large organic forms in the tradition of Henry Moore, such as Ridirich, in Aldgate, London (1980), to a more constructivist concern for geometric and mechanical forms, often exploiting the appearance of structural paradox, as with the interlocking parabolas of Judex, at Goodman’s Yard, London (1982). He is currently the director of Keith McCarter Associates, based in Galashiels in the Borders.
Bibliography: R. Cocke, Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk, Liverpool, 2013, pp. 73–74; Keith McCarter website; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Edinburgh (2 vols), Liverpool, 2018, vol. 1, pp. 394, 396–97; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 106–07; W.J. Strachan, Open Air Sculpture in Britain, London, 1984, pp. 33, 89, 144, 265; P. Ward-Jackson, Public Sculpture of the City of London, Liverpool, 2003, pp. 5, 150.
Ray McKenzie 2018