Fintan Magee

    Fintan Magee was born in Lismore, Australia to a creative family.  His parents are a sculptor and a landscape architect who met in art school. As a child, Magee moved with his family to Brisbane. During his teenage years, Magee experienced the graffiti culture of the city and transitioned from drawing to painting on walls.

    In his early 20s, Magee left Australia to travel Europe, citing how isolated the continent was from the rest of the art world. He painted graffiti on the sides of train cars but then discovered murals as an art form.

    Magee’s large-scale murals occupy distinctly urban spaces, earning him the nickname “Australia’s Banksy” by the media, a name which Magee greatly dislikes and dismisses as uncreative. He is considered one of the best social realist artists, a group which Magee believes were crowded out of the art scene by artists pursuing self-expression. Instead of creating art that reflects how he feels and identifies, Magee carefully examines the community and its social issues where he will paint his mural. He then uses real people as models for his painting, creating something that connects to the people who live there. Magee explains,

    “There is a disconnect from high art. Growing up or looking back, I realized that, in particular, the big art institutions and artists themselves weren’t really connecting with working people. When I started painting murals, I saw that as an opportunity to just reconnect with people who don’t have ‘capital A’ art as part of their daily lives in a way that feels natural.”

    Magee has completed art projects around the world, including in Sydney, Melbourne, London, Vienna, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Moscow, New York, Oslo, and Dublin.

    Written by Amelia Nixon

    Sources: http://fintanmagee.com/, http://galleriavarsi.it/artists/fintan-magee/, https://thinkspaceprojects.com/artists/fintan-magee/, https://sydneyexpert.com/fintan-magee-streetart-sydney/, https://streetartnews.net/tag/fintan-magee, https://www.juxtapoz.com/news/magazine/features/fintan-magee-the-realist/

    Image Source (Top): - Juxtapoz -

    2018

    Untitled by Fintan Magee

    Under a pedestrian bridge, Fintan Magee’s untitled mural rises along the side of a parking structure. The mural, which was commissioned by POW! WOW! Long Beach for their 2018 summer festival, may be difficult for viewers to find. Across Seaside Way from The Long Beach Performing Arts Center, the parking structure on which the mural is located is called the Long Beach Convention Center Parking Garage. The mural itself is on the northeast corner of the structure, facing the smaller street Hart Place. Visitors should be wary of cars, as Hart Place has no sidewalk. However, there is a small patch of concrete across Hart Place from which the mural can best be viewed. Magee’s mural adheres to the artist’s distinctive style of social realism in that it is convincingly lifelike but also has elements that are symbolic of social issues of the community. The mural’s subject is a man wearing a dark shirt, jeans, brown belt, sunglasses, and ponytail hairstyle. He carries several items, among them an open umbrella with a blue and mustard floral pattern, a blue and white windbreaker jacket, and what appears to be a thin paintbrush. In the foreground is a blue chair that matches the umbrella, which leans to one side due to several broken legs. The mural has minimal background, and much of the original cement wall is visible. The condition of the mural nearly a year later is excellent. Although it is located so near to the ocean, the wall is somewhat shielded by a pedestrian bridge from above and a structural pillar to the front. Written by Amelia Nixon

    Sources: https://lbpost.com/life/arts-culture/your-complete-guide-to-pow-wow-long-beach-2018/, https://impermanent-art.tumblr.com/post/176133841461/fintan-magee-for-pow-wow-long-beach

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