local color :: frances mcguire, painter & documentarian

"McGuire’s oil paintings, ranging in size from 8 x 8 to 40 x 46 inches, share a strong horizontality. “I’m always fighting for a straight line,” McGuire confessed. “I will wrestle a painting to death.” One feels the invisible grid beneath the surface onto which she layers color and shape and light to create feeling. Each painting is a palimpsest of emotion – but not necessarily narrative – expressed without judgment or expectation. The visual equivalent of, “I’m just saying.” The formality, or construction, of her compositions and the more traditional use of materials loosen to shards of fractured light and color for punctuation. What McGuire paints is all there is; what was is unseen, but not hidden because there’s nothing to hide."

Libby Ellis interviewed Frances McGuire last year for Martha's Vineyard Magazine. Read more in Where the Paint Hits the Road.

Frances McGuire's work is on view at The Granary Gallery in West Tisbury.