At Longyear Gallery: The Legacy of Anna Contes Maguire

By Robert Brune

Anna Contes Maguire’s family Nick Contes, Douglas Maguire, and Alethea Maguire at the opening reception of her memorial exhibition at Longyear Gallery 

Fruit study in color 

MARGARETVILLE — The Anna Contes Memorial Exhibit (April 26 - May 27) began with a very well-attended opening reception on April 27. The back room of Longyear was filled with a magnificent

retrospective of works organized by her daughter Alethea and husband Doug. They wish to honor

Contes Maguire by presenting this body of work not for sale - but for people to witness the full

spectrum of her gifts.

Anna Contes Maguire was an artist and educator who was born on February 6, 1944, in New York City. She was trained in oil, watercolor, and traditional egg tempera, and her earliest commissions included working as a Byzantine/Greek Orthodox iconographer and muralist. She taught at various institutions, including Cairo-Durham High School and the Woodstock School of Art, and exhibited her work nationally through various forums.

 Early Life and Education

 Anna Contes Maguire was born to Gus and Argiro Contes, natives of the Island of Ikaria, Greece. She began drawing and painting at an early age and attended William Cullen Bryant High School and the American Art School, where she received a painting scholarship. She majored in Fine Art/Art Education at Pratt Institute, where she met her husband, Douglas James Maguire enrolled at Pratt Institute, where she finished her BFA (1965) in Art/Art Ed, studying with faculty such as Alex Katz and Gabriel Latterman. Fellow Pratt student (soon-to-be- partner for 62 years); Douglas James Maguire followed her from a lecture to the roof. Doulas Maguire reflects on this lecture which he brought a date with him, “I noticed Anna and couldn’t take my eyes off her, finally my date said to me, ‘Why are you staring at her? She looks like a boy!’” Doug fondly tells the story;, it was love at first sight. The couple landed a teaching job at the Barlow School in Amenia, NY, then purchased a home in Woodstock around 1972. Shortly after their daughter Alethea their daughter was born.

 Alethea talks about living with two parents who had become teachers and artists, “They had bought a three-room bungalow in Woodstock and further built a studio with Dad’s CAPS Grant, and the help of my grandfather.” 

Alethea explains how she and her parents worked well as a family team unit, “We would take turns storytelling at dinner, visiting across studio spaces, reading to each other, watching a little midnight television, waking up to stock wood into the wood burning stove to keep the house warm, and I would sometimes wake up to dad blasting Miles Davis at four in the morning… jumpstarting us for school days.  while he worked in the studio (painting), with adventurous jaunts hiking and driving through mountain ranges visiting galleries, cinemas, and art dealers across state lines.”  

Anna would eventually build her studio, with support from her husband and a family gift, in which she further explored making her fade-proof, pure-pigment pastels, traditional egg tempera and oil paints.

Career 

Anna Contes Maguire was an artist/educator. Her earliest commissions as a painter... included working as a Byzantine/Greek Orthodox iconographer and muralist. 

She taught at various institutions, including Cairo-Durham High School, the Woodstock School of Art, and the Boston University Summer Arts Program at Tanglewood.  Awarded an Edwin MacDowell Art Colony in painting, she exhibited her work nationally through various galleries and museums, including the Albright-Knox Art Museum and the Woodstock Artists Association & Museum. 

 Artistic Style

Contes Maguire's artistic style was characterized by her use of color and light. She sought to capture the sensation of color and the structure of light energy in her paintings. She was inspired by her immediate environment, and her experience abroad; as her work often featured still-life, the figure, and the landscape.

Her use of colors and technique reflect the style of Van Gogh with directional strokes akin to the era of Post-Impressionists with the unique choices of colors, often using reds, purples, and magenta, never quite the same value twice. Alethea talks about how Contes-Maguire, her mother approached her work, “She was disappointed she couldn’t find her art supplies in the colors she wanted. So, she made her own pastels and oil paints, everything was non-toxic and thick pigment. She was a colorist. When she went to Pratt that was the focus of her thesis. Again, when she got her master's degree in New Paltz she studied color. She wasn’t just a colorist, she was like a chemist.”

Anna Contes Maguire's pointillism in many of her artworks is a stunning accomplishment of original stroke and mark-making. Her artwork holds its own against the works of Georges Seurat and Pierre Bonnard. Alethea, her daughter, and Douglas, her husband both have great admiration for Anna Contes Maguire’s ability to create an energy of electricity, igniting the air between the painting and the viewer.

In one series there is a painting titled ‘Our Front Yard #8’ it appears to be a hologram. This reporter had to examine the piece closely and from side to side because it looked as if the highlight colors were done on the outside of the framed glass. In addition, the abstract color studies from a series of fruits are unbelievably vibrant, and impossible to compare with any other artist. 

Legacy

Kim Do, a successful artist who met Contes-Maguire in the Woodstock area more than twenty

years ago, recalls Contes-Maguire showing him some of her favorite landscape locations to

use as subjects. K. Do and his wife dropped by Longyear Gallery on Mother’s Day to see their

friend’s memorial exhibition had this to say about her work, “In all Anna’s work we get to see how to see, with empathy and feeling for people and the world we share. Her visual acuity was not merely copying a realistic scene. From her early self-portraits to the more recent landscapes or zoomed-in depictions of fruit, she brought a big heart and an elegant sensitivity. Everything is deeply felt. Her paintings teach us how to truly appreciate the visual manifestations of life, and to bask in the glow of our planet.” 

Artist and close friend Marcia Clark comments on the current Contes-Maguire memorial exhibition at Longyear, “It was great to be able to just sit there surrounded by the work. The buildup of marks in many of the pieces like little symphonies - some with an extraordinary range of color. The paintings awaken a sense of mystery  -  kind of intensifying the color buds of the imagination. Amazing to sit there with them. I think you selected well! There are some extraordinary paintings/ oil pastels there. She had spoken about working consciously with the in-betweens - I think I begin to see what she meant.” 

Another dear friend of Contes-Maquire shares, “You couldn’t help but see Anna’s art as a reflection of who she was, as a reflection of her soul.”

Anna Contes-Maguire has been a member of Longyear Gallery since 2001, according to her husband Doug. Tragically, she had been returning home from watching the desk at the Margaretville gallery when she had gotten into a fatal car accident on Rt 28. She was buried at the Woodstock Artist Cemetery. She is remembered as a talented artist, educator, mother, and wife who brought joy, wisdom, and generosity to every gathering.