Encompassing painting, printmaking, watercolor, and drawing, David McGee's (born 1962 Lockhart, Louisiana) work explores the interplay between image and text to poignantly situate his practice within larger art historical narratives and generative social critiques. Humor, care, and thoughtfulness characterize McGee's practice across media, coupled with an interest in surface, emotion, and drama. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, his work explores a variety of subjects expanding towards the emotional weights of race, language, signs and signifiers, art history, and the recognition of existence, both individual and collective.
McGee grew up in Detroit, MI, and moved to Texas in the 1980s, where he received his BFA from Prairie View A&M University in 1985. He has had solo exhibitions at numerous institutions, including The Menil Collection, (Houston, TX) Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, (Houston, TX) Museum of African American Culture (Houston, TX), The Art Museum of Southeast Texas, (Beaumont, TX) The Gallery at UT Arlington, Texas, The Galveston Art Center, (Galveston, TX), and others. His work is featured in numerous permanent collections, including the Grand Rapids Art Museum (Grand Rapids, MI); Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy (Andover, MA); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA); Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI); W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA); The Menil Collection (Houston, TX); The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Dallas Museum of Art.
His debut institutional survey, David McGee: The Griot and the Nightingale will open Fall 2025 at the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art (Charlotte, NC), organized by Katia Zavistovski, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
McGee lives and works in Houston, TX.