Originally from Orkney, Steven moved to Aberdeen in 1998 where he attended Gray’s School of Art. He then went onto a Master’s in Fine Art at The Slade School of Art in London and then the British School at Rome. In 2024, Steven was awarded the prestigious MacRobert Art Award for Painting by the Royal Scottish Academy.

Read more

Glass Eden: The Botanical Worlds of Steven MacIver

In Glass Eden, Scottish artist Steven MacIver invites viewers into a luminous exploration of botanical gardens and glasshouses—spaces where nature is both curated and liberated, shaped yet wild. Through a series of new works, MacIver delves into the strange duality of these environments: architectural marvels that house the organic, modern temples where the natural and the artificial collide.

Drawing on the visual language of geometric structure and the organic forms of plant life, MacIver’s art captures the uncanny beauty of glasshouses — not as mere conservatories, but as portals to otherworldly realms. His work highlights the interplay between light, transparency, and enclosure, echoing the delicate balance between control and chaos found within these verdant sanctuaries.

There’s a dreamlike tension throughout Glass Eden. The viewer is suspended between the familiar and the alien, between the scientific impulse to catalogue and the poetic urge to drift. MacIver’s meticulous compositions invite slow looking, offering glimpses into imagined ecologies and forgotten futures, all contained within panes of glass and grids of steel.

At once contemplative and transporting, Glass Eden positions botanical gardens not only as places of preservation but as visionary landscapes.

2024 Received the RSA MacRobert Art Award for painting

2012 to date Dillon + Lee Gallery, New York

2008 The Latimer Award, Royal Scottish Academy

2007 Aberdeen Artist Society Shell Award

2004-6 The Sainsbury Scholarship in Painting and Sculpture, British School at Rome

2004 The Guthrie Award, Royal Scottish Academy

2003 The John Murray Thomson Award, Royal Scottish Academy

2002 The W Gordon Smith Award, Royal Scottish Academy