Artist Response: Ryan McGinness

Ryan McGinness

Ryan McGinness, Worlds within Worlds

2003, mirror maze installation, mixed media

Ryan Mcginness is a well renowned painter and artist.  McGinness lives in New York City and his studio is located in Chinatown New York.  This lecture was extremely crowed compared to the last lecture I went to.  McGinness began by proving to the audience that he was from Virginia Beach and very proud of that, showing us his drivers license to prove it.  McGinness explained to us that his first interest with art and design began at a very young age. 

I liked that McGinness explained how he created his paintings.  McGinness starts off sketching, and then makes his sketches into solid forms.  Then he brings the forms into the computer and finally creates screen prints from the computer images in which he uses to paint.  He seems to follow this pattern for most of his work especially for his work he did for the VMFA where he created paintings based on the permanent works of the museum.   One specific piece that Ryan McGinness showed us that I found most interesting was “Worlds within Worlds.”  McGinness created a maze of mirrors generating decals of sketches and drawings he made displayed on the mirrors.  The mirrors then reflected the drawings onto each other continuing and repeating the images forever. 

In regards to my questions about McGinness and if he gets lost in his art work I don’t believe he does because he works with only so many objects (subjects) on each painting.  McGinness also chooses exactly where he will place each design on his paintings.  McGinness mentioned during his lecture that the paintings aren’t planned at all then he continued to say that he has tried to plan paintings in the past however it has never successfully worked out or felt right. 

Quote

“Color is a secondary color- everything has to work in black and white first.”

Three words: graphic, design, bright