Alan Magee, born in 1947 in Newtown, Pennsylvania, attended art school in Philadelphia and, in 1968, began working as an editorial and book illustrator in New York. Among his regular clients were Time, The Atlantic, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and Bantam, Ballantine and Simon and Schuster Books. His illustrations received numerous awards from The Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts magazine, Playboy: The Annual Editorial Award, and the Art Directors Clubs of Los Angeles, Chicago And New York. Magee received a National Book Award in 1982. Magee has received awards for his painting from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design. Several Television documentaries have been made about his work including the Maine PBS production, Alan Magee, Visions of Darkness and Light, and Maine Masters: Alan Magee, (now in production). Magee has been interviewed on Radio for Voice of America, Monitor (Christian Science Monitor) Radio in NY, WHYY in Philadelphia, and Pacifica Radio in San Francisco. A profile of the Artist appears in the March/April 2001 issue (#332) of Graphis.
Magee’s works can be seen in many public collections including The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Portland Museum of Art, the Farnsworth Art Museum, the Arkansas Art Center, the Arizona State University Art Museum, the Newark Art Museum, and the Columbus Museum of Art. His work is included in the private collections of Mobil Oil, The Atlantic Richfield Co., Lucasfilm Inc., Cargill Corporation, Continental Grain, the Bank of Japan, the Union Trust Bank, The Janss Collection, and The collections of Billy Wilder, Henry Fonda, Chermayeff & Geissmar, Arnold Newman, Johnny Carson, Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, Nicholas Cage, Morley Safer, Burton and Deedee McMurtry, and the Richard and Jalane Davidson Collection of American Realist Drawings, among others.
