Maxwell Alexander Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
May 7-June 4
Logan Maxwell Hagege, Purple Mountain, Pastel Sky, oil, 16 x 20.
Since he first began painting desert landscapes in the early 2000s, Logan Maxwell Hagege has steadily forged a reputation as one of the brightest stars in a painting movement generally described as contemporary western. His work has won awards from, and is in the permanent collections of, top institutions nationwide, including the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, the Briscoe Museum of Western Art in San Antonio, and the Booth Western Art Museum in Georgia. Collectors eagerly vie for his canvases. So the debut of his latest works at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles, with a public reception on Saturday, May 7, from 5 to 8 p.m., is sure to draw enthusiastic crowds, both in person and online.
Hagege expects to show eight to 10 new paintings. “I like to work right up to the deadline for a show,” he says. “Then I set out all of the finished pieces in my studio, and I put on my curator hat to make decisions on which ones work best together as a group.” The artist anticipates that about half of the show is going to be “invented landscapes, based on strong memories that are burned into my brain of shapes and the feelings of color when I think of the desert.” These mostly “start as small thumbnail sketches, little shorthand ideas that I then develop into larger, more complete statements.” Among these selections, he’s particularly excited about two paintings, LINEAR SAGUARO and PADDLES. Both of them stand apart for having been painted on 16-inch circular canvases, for their cactus subjects, and for the artist’s stylistic approach. “They’re painted in a way that felt completely new to me technically—simplified to the pure essence of what this aspect of the desert feels like to me.”
- Logan Maxwell Hagege, Linear Saguaro, oil, 16 x 16.
- Logan Maxwell Hagege, Paddles, oil, 16 x 16.
The rest of the show is likely to be portraits of people Hagege has met and come to know on his repeated travels throughout the West these past two decades. Though human figures have appeared regularly in his work, they take on new significance here. “In art school,” he says, “I studied drawing and painting people on a daily basis. So this return to a figurative element feels very natural to me.”
Taken in its entirety, Hagege’s new body of work promises to include some of the most intriguing paintings yet from an artist who has always been effective at engaging with his audience. “Since I have had the luxury of working on this show slowly over a couple of years, I’ve held onto those paintings that I had fun making,” he explains. “When I look at paintings, I can tell when an artist had fun painting them. As I have mentioned to a few collector friends recently, this new body of work is very exciting to me.” And that excitement will no doubt convey itself dynamically to viewers as well. —Norman Kolpas
contact information
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www.maxwellalexandergallery.com
This story appeared in the April/May 2022 issue of Southwest Art magazine.