Education and Perception

Magee earned a BSc in Psychology from the University of Exeter before completing a residency at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her background in psychology continues to inform her fascination with perception, particularly the ways visual information is interpreted, completed, and felt by the viewer.

This interest finds a natural counterpart in abstraction, where gesture, color, and spatial relationships can communicate without relying on a fixed narrative. Magee approaches painting as an intuitive record of attention and experience, allowing sensation to take precedence over literal representation.

Art-Historical Memory

Magee’s practice draws on a broad art-historical vocabulary extending from Renaissance and Baroque painting and frescoes to Abstract Expressionism. Classical images provide points of departure rather than compositions to be reproduced. Light, pigment, rhythm, and structure are absorbed in passing and later reconstructed through memory and intuition.

This process allows historical references to dissolve into a contemporary visual language. Carefully rendered passages coexist with open brushwork and raw areas of pigment, creating a shifting relationship between structure and spontaneity.

Southern France

The landscapes and artistic heritage of Southern France have become central to Magee’s recent work. Its distinctive light, vegetation, architecture, and atmosphere inform her palette and her treatment of pictorial space.

Rather than painting particular locations, she translates these encounters into atmospheric impressions. The resulting compositions suggest gardens, changing skies, reflected light, and unfolding natural forms without resolving into conventional landscape painting.

Process and Visual Language

Magee builds her paintings through broad gestural strokes, spatial contrasts, petal-like forms, and translucent veils of color. Some passages retain a concentrated degree of detail, while others dissolve into fluid or tactile paint.

These transitions encourage the eye to move continuously across the canvas. Forms appear to emerge, recede, and reassemble, creating environments that feel simultaneously present and elusive. The paintings become recollections of light and place, slowed into pigment.

Exhibitions and Recent Work

Magee has exhibited internationally in New York, London, Florence, and Palm Beach, and her paintings are held in private collections worldwide. Her recent exhibitions include presentations at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Museo Bellini in Florence, Fresh Art Fair at Alexandra Palace, and Battersea Art Fair in London.

In 2026, Findlay Galleries presented a solo exhibition of her paintings in Palm Beach, followed by Couleurs du Sud at its New York gallery.

Close biography