Under-stand

Xanda McCagg is an American abstract artist who divides her time between the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City and Connecticut. A classically trained artist, she began her practice as a figurative painter but has since evolved into a style that abandons literal representation in search of more intimate portrayals of the human essence.

McCagg creates her abstract compositions using a mixture of oil, graphite, and collage. Her method of building a canvas is both additive and deeply transformative. She often begins with a distinct geometric understructure—such as the shape of a cross—and progressively veils it beneath successive layers of paint. Through this deliberate process of masking and layering, the initial form dissolves and evolves into a visual metaphor or “icon” of human experience. Even as her work becomes highly abstract, it remains firmly rooted in formal elements such as line and space, which provide an underlying aesthetic vocabulary for her art.

Integral to her process is an exploration of the small and large ways relationships can “shift.” Through the expressive interplay of thin glazes and thick impasto color, alongside delicate and rough-hewn lines, McCagg works to articulate these often-subtle evolutions. Rather than planning precisely where her composition will lead her, she relies on intuition throughout her process, applying the minimum amount needed to manifest what she calls “the fine line between perception and imagination of these relationships.