FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 9, 2021
Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Press Contact: Rebecca Dawson, Director of Communications
860.443.2545 x2112 / [email protected]
THE LYMAN ALLYN ART MUSEUM SHOWCASES ABSTRACT WORK BY XANDA MCCAGG
New London – The Lyman Allyn Art Museum announces the opening of Xanda McCagg Recent Work: Icon, on view Feb. 13 through Apr. 18, in the Glassenberg Gallery on the first floor as part of the Museum’s Near :: New contemporary series.
Xanda McCagg’s abstract paintings are investigations of the human condition on both a global and an intimate level. They push and pull the viewers perception through layers of distilled human experience. Using the language of line, color and mark making, McCagg’s work comments on the dichotomies that define and shape our lives. Observing the world around her by exploring the cause and effect of shifting relationships as they occur in nature and in humanity, McCagg creates compositions that speak to memory, metaphor and perception.
“At the core of my work is a fascination with the human experience. Motivated by an innate urge to communicate, I express myself through materials, directly marking, drawing, pushing paint, placing and forming,” McCagg explained. “Exposure from an early age to different cultures, arts, and history by my mother, a sculptor, and my father, an Eastern European historian, had an enormous impact on me and opened my path of expressing myself in the artistic arena. Moving from classical training and working from observation, my work has evolved in to abstraction and metaphor.”
In her recent work, the artist has drawn from impressions from her travels and from looking back through art history as a way of making sense of the present. Embodied in these paintings is the deep human need for hope, something that is so pronounced in these times.
The virtual opening reception will be Friday, Feb. 12, from 6 to 7 p.m. Please visit the calendar of events tab on lymanallyn.org for event registration information.
For more information, please contact Rebecca Dawson by email at [email protected].
About Xanda McCagg
Born in 1959, Xanda McCagg is an American artist whose abstract paintings resonate with her early interest in figuration. Based in Chelsea, in New York City, where she has maintained a studio for the past 25 years, she has exhibited her work in individual and group exhibitions in New York, Connecticut, Florida, and Massachusetts, and internationally in Paris, France; Budapest, Hungary; and Toronto, Canada. The work is well represented in private and corporate collections, such as Alliance Capital Management, New York, Posternak Blankstein & Lund LLP, Boston and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York.
McCagg holds a BFA in Art Education from Boston University and has been awarded numerous residencies, including the Visiting Artists and Scholars Program at The American Academy Rome, Italy; C.A.M.A.C Marnay Sur Seine, France; Can Serrat in El Bruc Spain; The Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont; and the Contemporary Artists Center, North Adams, Massachusetts. McCagg divides her time between a dedicated art practice and her independent initiative Art Introductions, SEE ART – MEET PEOPLE.
About the Lyman Allyn Art Museum
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum welcomes visitors from New London, southeastern Connecticut and all over the world. Established in 1926 by a gift from Harriet Allyn in memory of her seafaring father, the Museum opened the doors of its beautiful neo-classical building surrounded by 12 acres of green space in 1932. Today it presents a number of changing exhibitions each year and houses a fascinating collection of over 17,000 objects from ancient times to the present; artworks from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, with particularly strong collections of American paintings, decorative arts and Victorian toys and doll houses.
The museum is located at 625 Williams Street, New London, Connecticut, exit 83 off I-95. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, Sundays 1:00 – 5:00 pm; closed Mondays and major holidays. For more information call 860.443.2545, ext. 2129 or visit us on Facebook or the web at: www.lymanallyn.org.