about blake
New York and Atlanta-based artist
If you want an original piece or a custom commission, email me.
I'm Blake Maguire, 22, splitting time between New York and Atlanta. I'm just starting out in brand strategy, and when I'm not doing that, I'm painting every chance I get.
I've made art for as long as I can remember, seriously, since my elementary days, and I still work the same way I did as a little kid. Whatever's on the table finds its way in. Acrylic first, then maybe pastel, oil, crayon, pencil, and papers I stumbled across: receipts, gum wrappers, stamps, sticky notes, a ripped magazine page, and a photograph that had no other use. None of it is picked for what it logically means.
A lot of the work starts as something specific. My college graduation was painted as a street overflowing with balloons, each representing an individual friend. Dinners in Greece. Two months in Italy that I still think about more than I should. I keep the compositions abstract enough that you don't need my exact memory to feel something from it. You just need your own interpretation.
Basquiat is the artist I keep coming back to. No formal training. A whole visual language built out of symbols, and a messiness that somehow reads as precise. Steve Penley and Warhol inspire me too, though for different reasons. In Milan, I spent weeks in museums, and futurism and cubism at Museo del Novecento were the highlight. American art from the Industrial Revolution is another period I keep coming back to, especially Charles Sheeler: the flatness of his work, and the way he made his new inanimate age feel alive.