Education
2008 MFA in Painting & Drawing, The Ohio State University
2005 Yale University Summer School of Art, Norfolk Division, Yale University
2005 BA in Studio Art / Minor in Art History, University of Alabama in Huntsville
Contact
ianmagargeestudio@gmail.com
instagram.com/ianmagargee/
I make sculptural paintings. Each painting begins with a sketch driven by a general concept -- this piece will embody a sense of compression; it will collect or expand around a center of mass; it will be still and diagrammatic. The sketch evolves along with its seminal concept as polygons are added and manipulated until a satisfying configuration emerges. From this sketch, I build a sculptural support.
The primary challenge of my work involves harmonizing the activity of this support -- its distribution of volumes and the directional properties of its planes -- with the pictorial scheme painted over its surfaces. I divide the support into areas of color and tone. Networks of line crisscross these areas to different effect, indicating direction, contour, and tension. Line and plane overlap to imply depth. These pictorial movements engage the imagination in a way that the sculptural support, on its own, could not. They encourage an imaginative projection into the work that is both kinesthetic and architectural in nature.
Through a slow, deliberate process of adjusting sculptural and pictorial aspects, each piece ultimately achieves a kind of visual poise. Sculptural and pictorial relationships conflict and coalesce in a conversation that, when successful, expands the value of both.