Awakening Heart, romance paperback cover c. 1993

Robert Maguire painted this cover for the romance paperback, Awakening Heart, sometime in the 20th Century, probably using oil paint. The brushwork is loose, like the image was built up from a series of intuitive marks. You can see that in the way the light catches on the folds of the woman’s dress, or the implied texture of the red curtains. There’s something about the surface of this painting that I find so appealing. It feels like he wasn’t trying to trick us, to hide his process, but instead wanted to find an image through the materiality of the paint. Look at the man’s hand resting on the woman’s shoulder, how the paint is applied in short strokes, so you can almost feel the pressure of his fingers. It feels raw and unguarded. Maguire’s approach reminds me a bit of Alex Katz, in the way he simplifies and stylizes the figure, but also in his focus on capturing a fleeting moment or mood, with a very particular type of Americana. Both artists embrace ambiguity, knowing that art is a conversation, never a final statement.