Stephen Magsig's Postcards From Detroit & The Urban Alphabet Paintings, Now Available As Books

Above: 25 of stephen's individual letter paintings

I was happy to see that one of my favorite painters, Michigan artist Stephen Magsig, has compiled two book of his daily paintings; Postcards from Detroit and The Urban Alphabet.


Above: Stephen Magsig, Palace Detail, 2006, oil on canvas, 60" x 42"

Stephen, known for his photo-realism work of exteriors in oils, joined Daily Painters a little over a year ago and has had two beautiful series of works he's been creating simultaneously on a daily basis in small format works. One is "Postcards from Detroit", a collection of images, some urban, some suburban, and some rural, many seemingly abandoned and dilapidated -- all beautiful, if not a little eerie and lonely.

He sells these small paintings through Daily Painters and ebay and if you're not fast enough, or don't bid high enough, you won't get one of his 5" x 7", 7" x 5" or sometimes 5" x 5" renderings in oil on thick board. But if you do (and I'm lucky enough to have acquired three of them), you won't be disappointed.

His second series, is that of individual letters (some of which are shown at the beginning of this post), found on various signage - be it neon, painted or plastic- that he has painted in faithful reproductions with his beautiful painterly style (looser than his larger works). As a fan of these Letters from his Urban Alphabet series, I actually have purchased three of them; the A, The O and the K.

Now, much to my delight, Stephen has translated his daily painters work into book form, both the Postcards from Detroit series as well as his Urban Alphabet collection. Available on Blurb, you can choose from soft cover, hardcover with dust jacket or image wrap. A wonderful option for those of us who cannot afford his stunning large canvases available at either of the galleries that represent him.

Postcards from Detroit, Volume #1
Contains 80 pages of paintings posted from Aug 2007 -Dec 2007


Buy it here.


In the artist's own words:

Postcards from Detroit is a daily diary in small paintings by American artist Stephen Magsig. The inspiration came from Duane Keiser's innovative A Painting a Day blog, and Julian Merrow-Smith's Postcard from Provence. I am not new to daily painting. I started doing daily artwork, drawings, sketches, collage, polaroid images and paintings in 1987, and continue to work daily. Most of the work on this site will be Detroit based paintings. A visual diary of Detroit in paintings. I started to do paintings of Detroit more than 20 years ago, and continue to find inspiration in the place I call home. I will frequently post images of larger paintings that are available at the David Klein Gallery and the George Billis Gallery. Please contact them if you are interested in the larger paintings.

The Urban Alphabet, paintings by Stephen Magsig


Buy it here.

Below are a few examples of Stephen's large format oils, from the David Klein Gallery and the George Billis Gallery in New York, which I wish I could afford, but cannot:








About the artist:


Born in 1946, Steve studied at Ferris State College and the College for Creative Studies. As a painter he is really self taught, and has been painting for over 30 years. He's had more than 20 solo shows and numerous group shows. He currently shows with the George Billis Gallery in NY and LA and with with the David Klein Gallery in Birmingham, MI. His work is in over twenty corporate and museum collections and in hundreds of private collections. He lives and works with his artist wife, Janet Hamrick and their two studio cats, Artie and Bella, in Ferndale, Michigan. They also sublet a painting loft in New York City.

See his Daily Painters gallery here.
David Klein Gallery in Birmingham, MI
George Billis Gallery in NY
Magsig's Postcards From Detroit blog
Stephen Magsig on artnet

Kimberly Applegate: Calling Her A 'Painter' Doesn't Do Her Justice.

Above: two of Kimberly's more recent works


Artist Kimberly Applegate has finally found her niche. A painter I discovered on DailyPainters.com, she has cultivated a style and subject that are selling like hotcakes... or like knoll furniture in a clearance sale.

Admittedly I wasn't a huge fan of her daily painting work initially. I didn't include her in my post about chair painters because I felt her work was a little naive, and inconsistent. But over the past few months, she has begun pairing modern chairs with contemporary artwork and has found an audience that can't get enough of it. In doing so, her work is more consistent and mature, her compositions have improved and her technical skill is clearly better than one year ago.


Above: Daily painting "Saarinen's Tulip Chair with Hockney's Tulips"

While some are obviously superior paintings to others, they are all so likable and inviting that the bidding wars over each 6" square painting on ebay are increasing weekly.

Incredibly prolific (she churns one out every day) she has yet to repeat herself and the paintings just seem to be getting better and better.

Capitalizing on two trends of the moment, modern art and modern furniture, she pairs chairs from the likes of every respected designer from Saarinen to Wegner, Bertoia to Eames- even Philippe Starck, with artwork that compliments the chair by the likes of Rothko, Hockney, Indiana, Franz Kline, Warhol and so many others.


Above: Daily painting "The Butterfly effect"

Some are clever pairings, like the Butterfly chair with Donald Sultan's Butterfly silkscreen, and others have design elements that echo one another like that of the Matisse painting of Dancing Muses with their arms linked creating a circle and the Cherner Chair whose arms arc in a similar fashion.


Above: Daily painting "May I Have This Dance? (matisse and cherner chair)"

For you non gallery goers and newbie art buyers, the red dots mean they are already sold. If you want one you have to be quick and willing to pay at least $300.00+ . Believe me, I know, I wanted the Barbara Barry Chair painting (below) and lost out on ebay.


Above: Daily painting "Infinity (Barbara Barry Chair and Richard Serra etchings)"


Take a look at more of these great little daily paintings:
























And that's only one small facet of this woman's creativity. Her own bio on her bird painting blog (yep, she paints birds too) is very cute:

I earned my BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1999 and participated in the New York Studio Program through Parsons. I've schlepped a backpacker's easel across Europe trying to connect to my "painter ancestors"--they weren't kidding about the light in south of France. And if I ever win an Oscar for painting I will thank Vermeer, Kahlo, Hopper, Richter and Barney, to name just a few.

She's incredibly multi-talented, with numerous websites of her own. A painting website (on which you can really see a difference between her recent work and not so recent work), and an ebay store, 2 blogs and two online stores.



Live A Plush Life, whose site design is both inviting and inspiring and features notecards of hers as well as other pretty handmade items and a print shop of her chair paintings.






See all her daily paintings here on the Daily Painters site.
Or her blog, Joie de Vivre, here.

I have a feeling this woman is just beginning. Buy her work now, before you can't afford it.

Also, be sure to see my post" Artists Take A Seat: Beautiful paintings of Chairs"