Survey 3, 2013

Tom McGlynn  

Tom McGlynn is an American writer, independent curator and abstract artist whose creations explore patterns and forms, with the help of monochrome and contrasting colors. He is also the founding director of Beautiful Fields, an organization devoted to socially committed conservation projects. He lives and works around New York. The artist studied at Ramapo College in New Jersey, and obtained a bachelor's degree in 1979. In 1996, he obtained his master's degree in painting at Hunter College. McGlynn teaches at Parsons New School for Design in New York nowadays.

He draws inspiration from minimalist and post-minimalist traditions and through the work of geometric abstraction artists like Frank Stella. McGlynn treats Kasimir Malevich, Ellsworth Kelly, Mary Heilmann, Barnett Newman and Peter Halley as his artistic influences. McGlynn is also fascinated by phenomenology, studying structures of human consciousness which is unveiled via experiments. By turning contemporary common forms into abstract, putting them back in order, to trigger an emotional response, he is devoted to what he describes as "a kind of contemporary realism." McGlynn considers the entire visual landscape of culture, including medias, architecture, advertising and various other elements of the urban backdrop as the "accumulated sediment of the broadcasted conscience". He treats this "sediment" as his raw material and turns it into abstract.

McGlynn paints his work with a lot of energy, by slowly applying acrylic layers on wooden panels, canvases or paper. The artist, writer and conservator Brendan Carroll, co-founder of Agitators Collective commented his work "At first glance, the compositions seem orderly and balanced. But when one gets a closer look, the rectangular strips aren't symmetrical, but interspersed and unequal. They refute uniformity...His visual language is the outcome of an indifferent observation of the world which surrounds him...McGlynn's work leans....on the immediate effect of observing things....".

His work is part of several permanent institutional collections, these include Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Whitney Museum and MoMA in New York.McGlynn exhibited a lot and also participated in various installations and group projects in USA. His work appeared on Artforum's cover in October 1991 and his exhibitions were commented in the New York Times.