Ian Maguire, a painter in the abstract expressionist mold, had his first solo exhibition here in Vero Beach last November at the Center for Spiritual Care. Aptly titled “I am Ian: Emerging Abstractionist,” the large acrylic paintings on display ranged from colorful abstractions painted in a suave, brushy style, to multi-layered compositions comprised of tortuous strokes, slashes and splashes that make for knottier viewing. In recent months, Maguire has drawn with black pigment in a way that suggests pictographs of running people, Asian-inspired calligraphy, or the crudely limned beginnings of the human torso.
All of the paintings in “I am Ian” were executed in Vero over the previous year and a half, during a period of personal growth, urged on by a mentor who appeared at exactly the right time in Maguire’s life. Tim Sanchez, Vero’s foremost abstract artist and a painting coach for many up-and-coming artists here, met Maguire a few months after the latter arrived in Vero Beach.
Any artist who lands in Vero will sooner or later meet Sanchez. Like Maguire, they will hear a lot about Sanchez before meeting him in the flesh.
“Tim’s a role model,” says Maguire. “Everybody says the same thing. If I meet somebody at a gallery and mention Tim, right off the bat they have good things to say. ‘He’s a genuine, caring, good guy,’ everybody says that. His art speaks for itself, but above all, I’d like to be that kind of person.”
Maguire’s debut exhibition at the Center for Spiritual Care included an evening when he and Sanchez discussed, in general as well as more personal terms, the relationship between mentor and protégé before a small audience of art lovers.
Sanchez’s tutelage, Maguire explains, included “pointing out the technical stuff” of painting abstractly, but they “also talked about life, a lot of stuff. He made me become aware of the bigger picture, whether it be in the work or in life.”
Maguire is not exactly the greenhorn – in art or life – you might imagine him to be. Just shy of his 34th birthday, much of his adulthood has been spent exploring who he is and what form his artistic life will take.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Fines Art from Pace University in New York City, Maguire knocked around the city for a year and a half.
“I couldn’t find a job that wasn’t McDonald’s. I wanted to do something involving the degree that I worked very, very hard to get. I was hoping for some kind of apprenticeship, a job in a small gallery, or just be an assistant for free. It didn’t pan out, and I became very frustrated and envious of the artists who were working. That wasn’t good at all. I was stuck and didn’t know what to do,” he says.
Maguire’s parents, Vero Beach residents Alan and Maureen Maguire, have been Ian’s lifeline. Sensing her son’s confusion, his mother suggested that he enroll in film school at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Fla. Maguire, a lifelong film lover who was paid to write a screenplay during his years in New York, dropped out halfway through the school’s 12-month film production program.
Maguire, who admits he has been a “contrarian” since childhood, would challenge his professors and argue with them. School “was ruining my creativity,” he says.
He moved to Vero Beach almost two years ago, where, with his parents’ help, he has been a full-time painter. His studio is in a two-bedroom condo he calls home. Maguire spends most of his time there painting, getting traction on a style that he can call his own.
Maguire’s artistic journey began in his hometown of Canaan, Conn., where he early on showed an aptitude for music. He recalls that he was 6 or 7 when his uncle, a professional musician, taught him to play guitar.
His first fine art mentor was Roe Halper, a Westport-based painter, printmaker and sculptor who taught afterschool classes for talented high school students. Maguire says Halper taught her students not only how to make art, but also to think of themselves as artists. It was under her tutelage that Maguire learned of the second-generation abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell.
Mitchell died at age 66 in 1992, when McGuire was only 6 years old. He nevertheless developed a passion worthy of a romantic teenaged boy for her life and art. Mitchell’s star had begun to rise in 1951, when she participated in the “9th Street Show,” an exhibition of some 64 contemporary artists known collectively as “The New York School.”
Held in a building slated for demolition, the show introduced the work of young abstract expressions like Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Rauschenberg, alongside that of more mature artists, including Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock.
Mitchell’s early paintings, which feature nervous, overlapping lines, spiky accents and a generous use of black pigment, have greatly influenced Maguire’s own compositions. Maguire has also drawn, to a somewhat lesser degree, on elements of Mitchell’s mature style, with its vivid displays of bright color in landscape-like compositions. For Maguire, Mitchell’s oeuvre, as illustrated in his collection of books about Mitchell, is the Bible that he continues to turn to for inspiration.
Maguire began working toward a degree in art at Alfred University in upstate New York. There he also tested his ability to use music, words and wit as an art form, with a stint as a radio host and a member of band called “The Secondhands,” playing guitar and singing. In visual art, Maguire also developed an intense interest in the graffiti-influenced art of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
“Basquiat used to be my favorite, when I was doing graffiti,” he says.
“I did it when I was starting out at Alfred. They had what they called a legal wall in the courtyard,” where Maguire and others could try their hand at street art. His preferred subject was a cartoon “devil woman” that he invented. Maguire next spent a couple years or so in Delray Beach, Fla., where his graffiti took a left turn into illegal tagging; that is, covertly painting a stylized nickname or pictograph on surfaces that will be seen by the general public. A close call in a train yard, where he and fellow taggers were reported to the police (no arrests were made), ended his brief career in tagging.
Returning to school at Pace, he graduated in 2014. During that time, he had a paid gig as a screenwriter and on a dare from one of his friends Maguire tried his hand at stand-up comedy.
EastVille Comedy Club and Bar in Brooklyn was the site of his first stand-up routine.
“Stand-up comedy is one of the few jobs that you have to work at a long time; I did it for about a year and a half. People are not considered comedians until they have worked about eight years; you don’t get paid until a few years in, and then it’s very little,” Maguire says.
Although he felt comfortable on stage and had a good rapport with his audiences, he knew the odds of making a living as a comic were stacked against him. After knocking around the city for a year and a half after graduation, Maguire knew he’d reached a dead end.
Until he landed in Vero Beach.
“My whole life has changed pretty dramatically in the past 20 months, in positive ways,” he says.
Maguire says that he next wants to get a master’s degree in fine art. He’s thinking about applying to a number of schools, including the Maryland Institute in Baltimore, UCLA, Rhode Island School of Design, and his idol Joan Mitchell’s alma mater, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
“Tim thinks it’s a great idea for me to go to graduate school,” Maguire says.
“Yale was the first one he thought would be a good fit.”