The Kraken Drawing

Shannon MacGregor is a conceptual painter / graphic artist who has been living and working in the NY metro area for over ten years. MacGregor first grasped the aesthetics of contemporary design through exposure to street art in the American Northeast. Learning design fundamentals like symmetry and line definition, Macgregor rehearsed these skills in a wildstyle graffiti format that was prevelant in New York during the early and mid-ninties. . In the later half of the decade though, experimentation was beginning to occur in graffiti as the culture spread overseas. The artform had matured past its domestic containment; and new styles emerged from artists who had been previously excluded geographically. These artists had the benefit of "looking from the outside in", and more character driven, three-dimensional lettering appeared. When magazines began to emerge with evidence of this turning point from artists like Erni and Daim, it had a lasting effect on the painter. Eventually, the concept of using negative spaces and three-dimensional structures led MacGregor to the creation of larger, complex landscapes that were similar to what he found in his own cursory research of the surrealists. Having at this point in his late teens taken easily to the concept of autodidactic learning MacGregor delved further into art history, absorbing art work that was created to illustrate the poetry written during Greco-Roman period by realist Renaissance painters like Titian and Reubens, prints from the Vorticists, and WPA, and paint-centric pop artists like Rosenquist, Wesselman, and Lichtenstein. . Once the decision had been made to bypass art school, the opportunity to explore other mediums surfaced. Stepping away from fine art and diving into the world of culinary arts not only as a means to support himself but also to retain a creative outlet, MacGregor found that many aspects of cutting edge New American cuisine appealed to his detail oriented sensibility. He embarked on a 10 year career that involved cooking around the country, stopping in some of New York's top kitchens. It was in these fast-paced, high-end kitchens in the city that he adopted the critical thinking needed to create beautiful, immediate pieces of art that relied heavily on timing and execution. . Ultimately though, the culinary world is finite in it's medium, and in 2001 MacGregor opted to return to the greater creative flexibility of the visual arts.