Two Times Blue
Artist
Allie McGhee
(American, born 1941)
Date2014
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions30 × 40 in. (76.2 × 101.6 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LinePurchase, Art Acquisition Fund, 2024
Object numberUAC7693
DescriptionAllie McGhee is a prolific and decorated artist whose work explores “a contest between biomorphic, god-made kinds of energies and man-made.” Born in Charleston, West Virginia in 1941, McGhee moved to Detroit during his childhood where he found early inspiration through abstraction; he developed his art-making practice to explore realms of science, history, performance, and spirituality. In the studio “every day but Christmas,” he remains an active creator, mentor, and philosopher about the community.Two Times Blue, an abstraction from 2014, exemplifies McGhee’s interest in energy and texture. The work is composed of two harmonious oval forms in shades of blue and green that appear to invert one another; the left has a pale exterior which gives way to a deeper blue interior, while the wider body of the right reflects the same deep blue with splashes of black and butterscotch. The two contrasting surface forms—both containing rather similar centers at depth—are joined at their long edges over a rectangular background space characterized by its own layered qualities and varying opacities. The painting is remarkably unified in that the two forms appear to flow into one another in a play on an infinity symbol, atomic substructure, or even an electric circuit. Through this lens, Two Time Blues feels simultaneously macrocosmic and microcosmic. Further, the materiality of the paint—the energy behind its application, the spontaneity, process, and the artist’s gestural signature—heightens its immediate physical impact. The work is tuned to its own unique frequency to the point that the viewer standing nearby might sense a low vibration or the serene hum of its current.
In an interview accompanying the 2022 retrospective Allie McGhee: Banana Moon Horn at Cranbrook Art Museum, McGhee stated: “I often look at my stuff in the studio, when you have four or five paintings on the wall in front of you, and you push them closer together, looks like one long painting. Like what you did on one leads to what you're doing on another and so forth and so on. And I'm looking forward to having that long look from not just painting to painting, but decade to decade…It gives you more understanding and respect for evolution...how life began on this planet and how it multiplied and extrapolated into all these varieties, but they're all based on the same kind of concept. Makes you feel like you're a part of something much larger than your daily life. And so I'm looking forward to having that long read on my career.” McGhee’s practice has been celebrated for decades; he has received numerous awards, been the subject of solo shows, and been included in national and international group exhibitions. Besides Wayne State University, his work has been collected by the Detroit Institute of Arts, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, Flint’s Mott-Warsh Collection, the St. Louis Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Written by Sarah Teppen
1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9BG2qr0GQQ&ab_channel=AndrewMiller
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9BG2qr0GQQ&ab_channel=AndrewMiller
3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9BG2qr0GQQ&ab_channel=AndrewMiller
4 https://www.harpersgallery.com/artists/allie-mcghee/biography
