“McGill’s biting sculptures about golf challenge us to confront the vestiges of racism in a contemporary format.” – Douglas F. Maxwell, D’Art International Magazine Spring/Summer 2010
Trained formally as a painter, 2012 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow, Charles McGill has evolved into a multi-disciplinary artist. The majority of his work over the past 10-12 years falls under the auspices of the artist refers to as The Artifacts from the Former Black Militant Golf and Country Club, a conceptually-based body of work that incorporates golf objects, most golf bags, into statements that explore race, politics, sex and class. In this work he incorporates found object, graphic design, performance, essay, photography, appropriation, digital arts and collage into creating an array of golf and race-related objects infused with satire and socio-political digs. The current body of work, SKINNED, grew directly from his intensive study with appropriation of this object and his ever-present desire to work with the human figure.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1999 at the Barbara Ann Levy Gallery in New York City, his work has been exhibited at The Bridge Art Fair in Miami, Art Viceroy Miami, The Wadsworth Museum in Hartford, CT, RRC, The 2008 and 2012 Westchester Biennial and various other exhibition venues including his 2010 solo exhibitions “BAGGAGE” at Russell Projects in Richmond, Va. and most recently his solo show TRAPPED at The Phatory in NYC. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times,The International Review of African-American Art, The Brooklyn Rain, Artnet and Art in America. In 2007 he was a recipient of an Art Matters Grant and in 2009 was a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He was a nominee for the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2010 and was once again nominated in 2011.
Charles received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow, a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC and an AFA from Keystone Junior College in La, Plume, PA. He is also a former attendee of The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
In 2005 thirty of his drawings illustrated the book, The Six-Spoke Approach to Golf, published by Lyons Press.
He is currently represented byThe Phatory in New York City and the Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. He is an Adjunct Professor of Painting and Drawing at both Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, CT. and Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY. Charles lives and works out of Peekskill, N.Y.
About the Artist
“McGill’s biting sculptures about golf challenge us to confront the vestiges of racism in a contemporary format.” – Douglas F. Maxwell, D’Art International Magazine Spring/Summer 2010
Trained formally as a painter, 2012 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow, Charles McGill has evolved into a multi-disciplinary artist. The majority of his work over the past 10-12 years falls under the auspices of the artist refers to as The Artifacts from the Former Black Militant Golf and Country Club, a conceptually-based body of work that incorporates golf objects, most golf bags, into statements that explore race, politics, sex and class. In this work he incorporates found object, graphic design, performance, essay, photography, appropriation, digital arts and collage into creating an array of golf and race-related objects infused with satire and socio-political digs. The current body of work, SKINNED, grew directly from his intensive study with appropriation of this object and his ever-present desire to work with the human figure.
Since his first solo exhibition in 1999 at the Barbara Ann Levy Gallery in New York City, his work has been exhibited at The Bridge Art Fair in Miami, Art Viceroy Miami, The Wadsworth Museum in Hartford, CT, RRC, The 2008 and 2012 Westchester Biennial and various other exhibition venues including his 2010 solo exhibitions “BAGGAGE” at Russell Projects in Richmond, Va. and most recently his solo show TRAPPED at The Phatory in NYC. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The International Review of African-American Art, The Brooklyn Rain, Artnet and Art in America. In 2007 he was a recipient of an Art Matters Grant and in 2009 was a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He was a nominee for the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2010 and was once again nominated in 2011.
Charles received an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow, a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in NYC and an AFA from Keystone Junior College in La, Plume, PA. He is also a former attendee of The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
In 2005 thirty of his drawings illustrated the book, The Six-Spoke Approach to Golf, published by Lyons Press.
He is currently represented by The Phatory in New York City and the Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. He is an Adjunct Professor of Painting and Drawing at both Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, CT. and Westchester Community College in Valhalla, NY. Charles lives and works out of Peekskill, N.Y.