[Patrick McGannon]

Patrick McGannon

McGannon attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1985-1989 before completing his MFA at Indiana University in 1991. Since that time, McGannon has developed his work and has exhibited in numerous exhibitions across the US, including several exhibitions at the Modern Primitive Gallery in Atlanta.

An important part of the creative process for Patrick is to take figures that are realistically conveyed through observation and fuse them visually, poetically and psychologically with a place and time to create an image that signifies something beyond the sum of its parts. These paintings are made by combining the intimate studio experience of working from life with images and places with which he is familiar. Although he is attempting to create a cohesive reality, some of the separation between the figure and the place remains and becomes part of the content of the painting revealing a new-and for the artist-signifying event. An exaggerated perspective and a sense of distance in many of these paintings is crucial to the work visually, in its connection to time and in its consequent implications of birth, growth and death.