Xanda McCagg, Stand, 2015, Oil & Graphite on Canvas

Stand (Abstract painting) Oil and graphite on canvas. This painting explores the fine line between figuration and abstraction. The relationship of forms could be construed as figures in space. The humanness – standing, leaning, getting really close, getting far away is at the core of McCagg's work. She thinks about perception – noticing relationships and connections of people, the space between the people and the connection of the people. In the process of articulating compositions with graphite lines and painted forms, the paintings develop an expression of these ideas through abstraction. 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. 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.”