"Time of Change" is the title and theme of Tony Magar's latest exhibition at New Gallery/Thom Andriola.   

The gallery and the artist have had a long successful history together. It was thirty years ago that they had their first exhibition at New Gallery in Taos, NM. Although the gallery has had five different locations throughout the years and Magar has changed studios many more times than that, an unchanging constant has always been the unexcelled brilliance of Tony Magar's paintings. There have been steady shifts in his work throughout the years from minimal field like paintings to highly charged electric gesturalism. There have been times when his works border on figuration and shows that almost seem like imagined landscape. The wonderful constant in the works of Tony Magar has always been his ability to create painterly surfaces that seem to possess a life of their own.

If paintings could breathe, these are like deep breaths of pure mountain air. His paintings have always had a surface in which they seem to start at the raw canvas, then plunge into infinite depths of color, gesture, and form.

Magar never paints with a glossy surface. The "skin" of these paintings are nonreflecting but totally absorbing. At time the paintings can seem chalky or slate-like, but there is always a sense of strata, layers and penetrating light. His color sense is bold yet balanced. The forms can be unsettling and yet they are always elegant.   

There is just something about Tony Magar's paintings. Anyone who has known the work throughout the years would agree, they are always beautiful and simply unforgettable.


Thom Andriola