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Xanda McCagg is an American abstract artist who lives and works in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. A classically trained painter, she has evolved into a style that abandons figuration in search of evoking the human essence.

Education

McCagg earned her BFA in Art Education from Boston University. She has also studied at the New York Studio School and the Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, ME, and taught at the New School in New York and at the Bronx Museum. She has completed several fellowship and residencies, including at the Vermont Studio Center, The American Academy in Rome, Italy, The Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams MA, and at C.A.M.A.C in Marnay Sur Seine, France.

Technique

McCagg creates her abstract compositions using a mixture of oil, graphite and collage. Although she began her practice as a figurative painter, she has abandoned the figure in search of more intimate portrayals of the human essence. Nonetheless, her work is informed and influenced by formal elements such as line and space, which provide an underlying aesthetic vocabulary for her compositions.

Integral to her process is an exploration of the small and large ways relationships can "shift." Through the expressive layering of thin and impasto color, and delicate and rough-hewn lines, McCagg works to articulate these often-subtle evolutions. Rather than planning precisely where her composition will lead her, she intuits throughout her process the minimum amount needed to manifest the essence of what she calls "the fine line between perception and imagination of these relationships."

Inspiration

McCagg is inspired by the human experience, in particular the behaviors that arise from, and correlate to human relationships. Her work is often informed by the larger systems that emerge out of those relationships. Cultural issues like poverty, government, religion and war, cultural phenomena like mythology, and dichotomies such as strength and weakness often manifest in her work on a human and intimate scale.

Collections

Work by Xanda McCagg is featured in the collections of many private individuals, as well as in the corporate collection of Alliance Capital Management.

Exhibitions

Xanda McCagg has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, as well as in Budapest, Hungary and Paris, France.