About the Artist
Photo by Matt Hopkins.
John MacConnell is a New York City-based portrait and figurative artist. His work focuses on people’s interaction with contemporary life, culture, and community.
John is drawn to safe spaces for queer people—physical and virtual. His current work is most inspired by social media. Online communities are often places for queer people to connect with each other when a safe physical space or distance is a problem. Recent history has shown how important these environments are and they deserve recording as much as traditional landscapes. Using these online communities, John connects with people and collaborates with them to make his work.
Through his series Instant Gratification, Pinch Zoom, Rapid Development, Pictura in Pictura, and Fragments he captures different aspects of our experiences with social media—good and bad. His work references the visual vocabulary of the medium and addresses connection, adulation, idolization, and objectification.
He has been interviewed about his work in numerous publications, including the T: The New York Times Style Magazine. John has his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and has studied at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam. He formerly taught at Long Island University. He has exhibited in solo and group shows in New York City, Boston, and internationally.
“And my aim in my life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can. Then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, ‘Oh the pictures I might have made!’”
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