Artist Talk: Allie McGhee @ MW Gallery

Name: Artist Talk: Allie McGhee @ MW Gallery
Start: 2024-12-14T14:00:00-05:00
Location: MW Gallery

Schedule

Sat, 14 Dec, 2024 at 02:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

MW Gallery | Flint, MI

Allie McGhee has been a pillar of the Detroit art community since the 1960s. A prolific artist, McGhee’s work is ever-changing and evolving like nature itself. Allie McGhee joins MW Gallery’s manager Michaela Mosher in a conversation about his journey into abstraction, his life as an artist, and what’s next.
Free event | Q & A to follow
This program is presented in conjunction with MW Gallery’s exhibition "Beyond the Physical World: Abstraction from the Mott-Warsh Collection", on view September 13, 2024 through January 25, 2025.
For more info, call (810) 835-4900 or visit m-wc.org
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About the artist:
"Born in West Virginia (1941) and reared in Michigan, Allie McGhee has been a pillar of the Detroit art community since the 1960s. A graduate of Eastern Michigan University (1965), he began his artistic career creating figurative, semi-abstract works, but he soon developed an abstract painting style, focusing more on the energy of a painting than its obvious content. He explains his transition between his artistic styles: 'it’s a long, developmental period, just as when you grow older, you see things differently in life. I paint things differently than I did when I was a child. You would draw a tree as something brown and cylindrical with a big glob of green at the top. But, as you grow older, you see that a tree is much more than that; you examine it from all possible perspectives: scientifically, philosophically, spiritually.'
McGhee’s work has been included in major group exhibitions including 'Harold Neal and Detroit African American Artists, 1945 Through the Black Arts Movement', Marshall Fredericks Sculpture Museum, Saginaw, Wayne State University, Detroit, and Eastern Michigan University Gallery, Ypsilanti, MI (2021); 'Enunciated Life', California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2021); 'Landlord Colors', Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, MI (2019); 'Art of the Rebellion: Black Art of the Civil Rights Movement', Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (2017); and 'Ménage a Detroit: Three Generations of Detroit Expressionist Art, 1970-2012', N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Detroit (2012).
Most recently, McGhee’s work has been the subject of solo presentations: 'Parallax', Harper’s, New York (2022); 'Allie McGhee: Banana Moon Horn', Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills (2021); 'Allie McGhee: The Ritual of The Mask', Belle Isle Viewing Room, Detroit (2021); 'Allie McGhee, Hill Gallery', Birmingham, MI (2019); and 'Cosmic Images 2000', University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2018). McGhee’s work is included in numerous public collections including National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Detroit Institute of Arts; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint; St. Louis Museum of Art, St. Louis; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Toyota City Hall, Toyota, Japan.
- From the artist's artwork labels in exhibition "Beyond the Physical World: Abstraction from the Mott-Warsh Collection", curated by Stephanie James. September 13, 2024 through January 25, 2025 at MW Gallery, Flint, MI.