Gina Magid

Artist Statement 

I make charcoal and oil paintings, mostly on sewn and stretched silks, canvas and paper. Much of my subject matter is derived from the popular culture, while the form of the paintings is strongly influenced by my interest in the abstract layering of imagery to create psychological, rather than perspectival, depths.

Through my work I seek to engage, address, and express the non-verbal, seemingly illogical undercurrent which connects all things.  Therefore, anything and everything may possibly find its way into one of my paintings, so long as it has moved me. Ideas or images may be born from film, literature, current events, fashion, dreams, the natural world, and other artists’ work.  However, it is my personal experiences, relationships, and history that most significantly inform the pieces.  

I would like the viewer to feel a glimpse of the psyche when standing before one of my paintings.  I would like to induce the feeling one has right before waking up or falling asleep, embracing a realm of time which exists between two worlds:  conscious/subconscious, chaos/structure, creation/destruction, beauty/horror, desire/repulsion.  I tread these relationships when creating the internal logic of a painting.  My intention is to unite them in a seamless, sensuous reality which is capable of resonating meaning on varied levels of perception.

Enthralled by the natural world, Gina Magid creates layered, mixed media paintings, which feature brushy, abstract elements and florid images of plants, animals, and people. “Although I may not appear to be directly addressing the current issues of science and technology, these branches of study stem from the same ideas my work is dealing with: a desire for connection to other people, nature, and animals,” she says. Her work draws from observation and experimentation, mixing imagery taken from various sources to form allegorical or mythological amalgams, all with a painterly display of the artist’s hand. She was the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2003.