Artist and author Will James wrote, "The West, where a man can look farther and see less of anything but land and sky." Today, Western artist Logan Maxwell Hagege may have agreed with the statement to a point. However, in his studies of the open landscape, Logan explores both the macro and micro worlds of the Southwest's vast landscapes.
Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County, California, Logan's first creative endeavors were drawing superheroes in cartoons and comic books. He thought at the time he would become an animation artist. At 19, he joined an animation studio in Glendale, California. While at the studio, he received the advice he fine-toned his drawing skills with the suggestion he enrolls in a nearby college, Associates in Art, in Sherman Oaks, California, known as the Associates in Art. During this time, Logan quickly realized he loved working independently and that the collaborative process of an animation studio wasn't for him. As a result, he resigned from his position at the animation studio and enrolled in the Academy's Advanced Master's Program, a two-year, full-time life drawing and painting course. The traditional approach required students to draw and paint live models five days a week for at least six hours daily. During this time, Logan also studied privately in the studios of Joseph Mendez and Steve Huston.
Despite immersing himself full-time in the art creation process, Logan wasn't sure art would be his future full-time. He states, "I didn't realize art could be something you could do full-time until a woman at the art school explained the process of achieving gallery representation to me." Upon graduating, Logan's work was accepted into a gallery space in Pasadena, California; that was the point of no return. The evolution process began with additional galleries representing his work.
Over the years, Logan's 'stylized realism' style has become epic as he continues challenging himself to new and imaginative realms. He says, "When you go to art school, you are taught a language, and you learn how to speak and write. However, you don't know how to create poetry." Logan explains, "When I started showing my work in galleries, I had this vocabulary in art that allowed me to paint well. However, I didn't have my voice." In his initial stages, he describes his painting style as impressionistic, with short, thick strokes depicting women on the beach. However, the style and subject matter didn't inspire him after a while.
The time came for Logan to take a sharp departure, beginning to paint from his imagination and moving away from reality into a stylized style of representation of his subjects. His new approach caught on, increasing sales for his new work. "About this time, I took a road trip through the Southwest, a life-changing experience." Until this time, Logan hadn't considered the desert landscapes as subject matter. The quiet, lonely places with the simplicity of the desert, the vast space of the sky, and the long horizons enchanted Logan to the point his subject matter focus entirely transformed. Logan began painting the desert landscapes in a stylized, simple way. However, it wasn't long before his background in life, drawing and painting, inspired him to include the native people of the area. Over the years, he met and built relationships with many Apache and Navajo tribal members. During this time, Logan's painting became increasingly complex and developed into a mature stylized realism that portrays the desert lands and its people as dreamlike images.Â
Logan's lifelong habit of filling sketchbooks and notepads with endless thumbnail sketches carries into his art creation today. From these sketches, he collages ideas, photographs, field studies, and imaginative musings into a full image for a painting. Logan's "stylized realism" makes him a master of geometric design where angles and edges are softened by the curve of clouds that serve as a reverberating feature by mimicking the shapes of blanketed figures in the foreground and creating a visual roadmap for the viewer's journey through the canvas image. In recent works, Logan has ventured into the world of the American cowboy, creating vibrant and dynamic scenes that capture the spirit of the West. He explains, moving forward, "My paintings are not historical representations or cultural depictions. My paintings are my vision of the world; there's where it stands, and that's where it ends." Artist Logan Maxwell Hagege works from his home studio in Ojai, California. His work is represented by the Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Pasadena, California, The Owings Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, and the Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Website: www.loganmaxwellhagege.com
