Christopher McVicar-Updated Artist Statement & Bio

 Artist Statement

My work starts with picturing an image. Quick photos of friends, family, people I know, people I don’t, moments that feel worth holding onto. Nothing staged, nothing precious. Just everyday life as it unfolds. From these moments, I take those images apart. layering, distorting, rebuilding them until they feel less like a record and more like something lived in.

The image moves into drawing and then painting, where I loosen up. Through saturated color, loose washes, and instinctive mark-making, the figure starts to slip between clarity and abstraction. I’m after something more honest than just likeness. A sense of presence. A feeling. The parts of someone that doesn’t sit still long enough to be photographed. 

    I paint the human figure because it keeps me grounded. Most of the time, I’m painting people close to me, but not always. Either way, the work becomes a way of staying connected; through processing relationships, memory, and the weird, fleeting nature of it all. 

At the end of the day, I just want to make paintings that feel real. Something that holds onto a moment a little longer. Something that says, simply: 

I was here. 

Bio

Christopher McVicar is a painter and graduating BFA recipient at New Jersey City University, originally from Toms River, New Jersey. Now based in Hudson County, he works primarily in oil painting and portraiture, creating figurative work that explores identity, relationships, and experience. His work is being featured in the group exhibition Intertwined at the NJCU Visual Arts Building Gallery, and he is a recipient of the NJCU Transfer Presidential Scholarship. 

McVicar’s path to art began after initially pursuing construction and earning a welding certificate before a knee injury led him back to school. He currently works as a part-time painting instructor at One River School of Art and Design in Montclair.