Joe MacGown

Artist Statement: "I am a self-taught artist originally from Maine, but now living in Starkville, Mississippi with my wife Julie and my son Joseph. I have worked as a research technician/scientific illustrator since 1988 at the Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University."

Although I do a variety of different types of art including scientific illustration, floral studies, old buildings, large woodcarvings, and watercolor and impressionistic landscapes, I prefer to do surrealistic artwork. For the last 30 years, I have been working to create and perfect my own unique style of surrealism, which I refer to as "Neogothic Surrealism" or "Subconscious Meandering." I predominately work in black ink, using fine-tipped Koh-i-noor Rapidograph pens, but also do mixed media color works. My drawings are highly detailed with many layers built up by crosshatching, stippling, and other methods. The structure of my artwork is predicated on the drawing of random shapes, after which I then draw shapes in the negative spaces created by the first shapes, and so forth. I use nature, science fiction, and various other observations as inspiration. My observations and ideas mingle in my mind with other memories and thoughts and are later expressed in random ways in my drawings. When I begin a drawing, I usually have no preconceived idea of what I am going to draw, other than at most a minimal idea or a basic shape. I typically do not do underlying pencil sketches, but instead start working directly with the pen. This allows for more spontaneity and subconscious flow, which is the basis for much of my surreal art. My themes tend to be many-fold, as I do many types of artwork, but recent work centers on the interrelationship of the environment and all forms of the animate and inanimate.

Contact:
Joe MacGown
email: art@joemacgown.com
website: www.joemacgown.com
phone: 662-323-4128