‘If a straight line is the shortest distance between two fated and inevitable points, digressions will lengthen it; and if these digressions become so complex, so tangled and tortuous, so rapid as to hide their own tracks, who knows-perhaps death may not find us, perhaps time will lose its way, and perhaps we ourselves can remain concealed in our shifting hiding places.’
Italo Calvino

Since graduating from Leeds Metropolitan University with a degree in Fine Art Andrew George Magee has been developing a vocabulary with which to produce paintings that have come to encompass a growing personal mythology.

His work aims at tracing the lightning flashes of the mental circuits. Threads of paint or ink suggest neural pathways, as though a singular thought or electrochemical action in the brain could manifest itself and be recorded. The images gather around these threads as though attracted by some magnetic impulse. In many of the paintings the threads are often read from the base of the left hand corner and climb to the right. This seems to me to be a statement of hope; an optimistic line, a journey upwards to a hidden realm.

The images that crowd the paintings hang in an ambiguous state, quite literally, a floating world. It is a state of potential, of energy waiting to be earthed. The tensions created by overloading the work aspire to convey a spiritual awe or point of rapture.

The narratives are suggested and rarely explicit. The colours are often muted and used as an acoustic pulsation to underpin the foreground.

The work is hand drawn and labour intensive. Andrew likes to see the evidence of the human hand and although a line might seem perfect from a distance once the painting is examined it’s flaws are apparent. He allows the images to grow across the surface of the painting conveying a flux of movement and light. The painting is worked out through the process of addition and erasure and Andrew rarely begins a work with a finished image in mind. It is a continuous process of adjustment to balance to picture to allow the eye to rest comfortably on a complex image.

The style of painting and the mythology underpinning the work feeds from Tibetan and Nepalese religious iconography of Buddhism and Hinduism; supported by a 3-month study visit from which Andrew returned in December 2003.

The paintings are produced with a variety of mediums ranging from acrylics, metallic inks, magic marker and occasionally resin on canvas and board.

Andrew’s prices start at £120 for a Limited Edition Print and go up to approx. £3,500 for an oil on canvas painting.

Andrew currently has a limited edition prints in our webshop.

Andrew George Magee Limited Edition Prints