About the Artist

 Patricia Beggins Magers is a native of Staten Island, New York. She received an undergraduate degree in art from Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan and began a career that included museum exhibits preparation, book and advertising illustration, and commissioned portraiture. In 2005 she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing from Georgia State University in Atlanta. She lives and works in Roswell, Georgia.

About the Collections:

THE CONSTITUENTS

This Is a series of "portraits" of pre-war lead figures, tiny toys which I have been collecting for years. The actual figures are between 1" and 3" tall. The paintings vary in size from 12"to 36". I am attracted to them as subjects because of their beauty, the care with which they were made and because I admire how expressive they are despite their tiny size. They remind me of The Borrowers, a book I read to my children, about a family of tiny people who lived hidden in the house of normal-sized people. They only came out at night, to borrow whatever they needed, and took great care never to be seen by the big people. Each lead figure and animal shows the wear and tear of the play of long-ago children, which I love. By painting them in a realist portraiture tradition I want them to be seen as representative of aspects of ourselves.

Riverworlds and Landscapes

 Inspired by extensive time spent in India, these paintings are an exploration of water as metaphor and reflection of Patricia's ongoing study and experience of Eastern meditation practice. The unpredictable twists and turns that happen along the way on a spiritual path are mirrored in the artist's working methods, which are organic and spontaneous. She allows the work to lead her where it will, incorporating drawing, torn paper, found objects, the written word, ink, beeswax and paint of various kinds to serve the meaning of each piece. The Chattahoochee River, which flows through Atlanta near the artist’s home,  has been an inspiration for her work. Particularly in pieces where images of water figure prominently, she incorporates encaustic techniques and poured beeswax, combined with oil paint, to mimic the movement of the river, and to introduce an element of chance to the compositions. In some pieces, such as Before Going and Snake River, she adds a series of small panels running along the top or bottom of the larger panels. These are often mixed media pieces to be read as a visual commentary on the main panel.

Excavations

These paintings are about mining the subconscious. They arrive through the process of working rather than from a preconceived idea. Layers of paint and wax, collaged paper, photographs, words and objects; adding and subtracting with hands or brush or pencil or pouring or sanding or scraping until something emerges. The meaning also emerges, sometimes lagging behind the images. There is a thrill in this way of working, in receiving messages from that place below words.  

Figure Drawings

Drawing the human figure from life has been of continual interest to the artist throughout her career, an ongoing pursuit since first studying as a teenager in Houston, Texas at the Museum of Fine Arts. She enjoys the challenges inherent in the practice, the sense of immersion and the feeling of suspension of time while engaged in an activity which demands intense focus.

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Patricia Beggins Magers is represented by The Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico..