El Mac - Artist Analysis

Born in Los Angeles in 1980. Mac has been creating and studying art independently since childhood. He began painting with acrylics and painting graffiti in the ’90s, when his primary focus became human faces and figures. He has since worked consistently toward developing his unique rendering style. In 1999 he began to paint portraits of his friends and anonymous Mexican Labourers in public spaces throughout the American south west both legally and illegally. He also started painting large technicolour aerosol interpretations of classic paintings by old European masters. This led to being commissioned in 2003 by the Groeninge Museum in Brugge. 

Some of his murals have become local landmarks, Mac’s art was featured on the cover of Juxtapoz magazine in 2009 and again in 2012, as well as the cover of LA Weekly for a feature on the Seventh Letter collective. In the last few years he has had successful solo exhibitions at Fifty24SF Gallery in San Francisco in 2009, and Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City in 2010.  In 2010 he also painted a large mural on the museum of contemporary art in Mexico as part of the Seres Queridos project. In 2012 he painted a large mural in Havana, Cuba for the 11th Havana Biennial sponsored by the Cisneros-Fontanals Art Foundation.

Mac continues to balance his love of painting large-scale public artworks around the world, He aims to uplift and inspire through his careful, perfectionist renderings of both the sublime and the humble. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

When I first saw this artwork by El Mac I was amazed because it looked real, as if someone had stuck a picture there. Its so life like and real. El Mac freezes his spray paint before starting because this gives it a ghost effect where some of the lines are fainter than spray paint would usually produce.

I like the fact he only used three colours as well this makes the image stand out more in my opinion because you notice more detail contrasting from the bold red to the dark tones of the black.

This portrait is of a local campesino he took a photo of in Cmpeche, Mexico. He was only in London for 48 hours and spent the whole time working on this.

 El Mac painted this portrait of Chelsea Jewel in New York City in 2010. If you go to this website http://vimeo.com/17835335   You can watch the video of it being painted by El Mac himself of course.








I love his technique of cooling the spray paint before using it to create a ghost/ fan effect from the paint whereas usually spray paint creates a harsh line. El Mac chose his site well for this piece  because it is on a main road and already on a black background, He had some trouble while painting this from passers by as you see in the video clip but that did not stop him.

This is called Inspired and the background was not painted by El Mac but by an artist called Kofie. This was painted at Mid-City Arts for the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Street Cred” exhibition. Los Angeles, 2011. 

El Mac really captures the persons emotion by using certain colours in each piece he paints, In this artwork the woman is looking up as if she is looking for something, El Mac used the colour red witch colour mean anger, passion or even love. The expression in her face suggests to me she is waiting for someone maybe someone she loves to come back, I cannot find the real meaning behind this piece but I guess he might have wanted the public (audience) to make up their own minds about what it is meant to mean.