Alasdair McGregor was born in Sydney in 1954 and studied architecture at the University of New South Wales, gaining an honours degree in 1979. Painting since childhood, Alasdair is largely self-taught. Since the early 1980s he has devoted himself almost exclusively to self-development as an artist, later also directing his energies to writing and photography.

In 1983 he helped organise the Heard Island Expedition, venturing to the sub-Antarctic with the expedition as artist and photographer, and in the following two years voyaged to the Antarctic continent and Macquarie Island as a guest of the Australian Antarctic Division. Commissioned works for the Antarctic Division followed and a stamp issue for the 25th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty was made by Australia Post in 1986 featuring Alasdair’s designs.

From 1985 to 1990 he worked intermittently in architecture as well travelling extensively in Australia and the Pacific, continuing a commitment to his interpretation of the region’s natural landscapes. During his travels he participated in a survey of Aboriginal rock art sites in remote parts of the northern Kimberley region of Western Australia and in 1990 took part in Artists in the Field, a field camp in Kakadu organised by the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Further expeditions to the Kimberley resulted in the 1992 publication of The Kimberley: Horizons of Stone, co-written with Quentin Chester. More than a dozen extensive field trips off every Australian coast were undertaken from 1993 to 1995, culminating in the 1997 publication of Australia’s Wild Islands (also with the same co-author). Continuing the island theme, Alasdair’s painting travels have more recently taken him to Vanuatu and the Galapagos Islands.  

From 1996 to 2001 Alasdair was artist and photographer for the AAP Mawson’s Huts Foundation, taking part in three summer expeditions to Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica. His account of the conservation work undertaken at this internationally renowned historic site was published in 1998 as Mawson’s Huts: An Antarctic Expedition Journal.

Since the early 1980s Alasdair has participated in more than a dozen group exhibitions throughout Australia and has staged a similar number of one man shows, including: 1983 – Wind, Ice & Fire: A Journey to Heard Island (travelling exhibition); 1991 – Five Weeks in the Kimberley (Kensington Gallery, Adelaide); Horizons of Stone (Painters Gallery, Sydney); 1996 - Australia’s Wild Islands (Sydney City Galleries); 1999 – Mawson’s Antarctica: A View from the Huts (AAP Centre, Sydney); 2001 – Travels in the Wild (Bloomfield Galleries).

Alasdair McGregor has completed corporate and public commissions both in Australia and overseas and his work is represented in numerous collections, including: The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, The Sir William Dobell Art Foundation, The Australian Antarctic Division, Qantas, Westpac, British Airways, AAP, KPMG, Western Mining, Hilton International, Brisbane and the Jerradong Park Resort, Brunei.

In 2001 Alasdair curated the photographic exhibition ‘… that sweep of savage splendour’: A Century of Australians in Antarctica, for the Australian High Commission in Ottawa, Canada.  The exhibition was a Centenary of Federation event and has since toured Canada, Australia and South American countries. A biography of the exhibition ‘centrepiece’ – renowned Australian photographer, adventurer and photographer Frank Hurley – followed. Frank Hurley: A photographer’s life was published in 2004. The book was short-listed for the Queensland Premiers Literary Awards, the Westfield/ Waverley Library Prize and the National Biography Award. 

Alasdair is currently researching and writing a biography of the American architects - Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin — planners of Australia’s capital city, Canberra. This project has been supported by the award of a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. Further afield, Alasdair’s most recent involvement with Antarctica has seen him working over several summer seasons as a lecturer on tourist voyages visiting South Georgia, the Antarctic Peninsula, the Ross Sea, Adelie Land and the sub-Antarctic islands to the south of Australia and New Zealand.

When not travelling, Alasdair McGregor divides his studio and writing time between inner-city Sydney and a small patch of paradise close to the beach on the New South Wales south coast.

Participated in the Drysdale River Rock Art Survey, Northern Kimberley, Western Australia. Involved in locating significant bodies of prehistoric rock art.

The Kimberley: Horizons of Stone, Painters Gallery, Sydney; Bloomfield Galleries, ACAF3, Melbourne