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.

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.