Maggee Day's paintings capture the evolving experience of working in her Chinatown studio. Scattered paint cans, studio chairs, architectural details, and budding trees seen through her window find their way onto her canvases through a generative process that reveals unexpected angles and new ways of seeing. Working on multiple canvases at once, she allows each layer to dry over time, returning with fresh perspective. Through this gradual layering, her paintings offer shifting observations of the same space, creating a visual history of change—shadows stretching, objects rearranging, and light subtly transforming the perception of forms.
Maggee Day’s works are notable for a sense of freedom, cultivated by the space outside of the canvas as much as what is in and on the paintings’ surfaces. Compelled by the architecture, streetscape, and views observed from her studio and home, the ingresses to Day’s spaces—windows and doorways—are the foundation of her recent bodies of work. Her choice of the familiar as the fundamental site of her study allows for a more experimental yet detailed exploration of materials and processes, and while her paintings appear as abstractions, they are in fact drawn from her surroundings.