Michael McGregor is effortlessly cool. His oeuvre of ebullient, gestural drawings in riotous excess question and perceive luxury, leisure and travel through a frivolous eye. McGregor – whose proclivity to render the ordinary in extraordinary terms – has sparked conversation, caught the eyes of lauded publishers and gained himself global recognition.
The Los Angeles-based artist has curated a portfolio of representation that could be easily defined as his rendition of pop art, and it is easy to imagine the work lacquered around the walls of renowned design-led hotels. His creative, anomalous approach is refreshingly instinctive. His first memories of art are telling: “I always remember colouring and drawing outside the lines as a child.” That resistance to borders, definitions and thinking outside the lines continues to animate his practice.
It isn’t uncommon to hear people speak of seeing the world through youthful eyes – to imagine the world without the nebulous impacts that gradually taint our perception as we grow, and to return to a place where we can appreciate beauty with a childlike devilment. In some ways, McGregor’s work is mnemonic. It is in this space of creative abandon that his art resonates so deeply, evoking the innocence of a child’s first encounter with colour and shape, where every page is a blank slate for the imagination to roam.
Refusing to bow to the conventions of the art world, McGregor “follows intuition and goes from there.” The innocence persists, even as his work flirts with Warhol and Bonnard. “It’s just work,” McGregor says. “You make some, you make some more, you move on, and you keep making. I don’t make them too precious. A drawing is immediate. Done and done. A painting is slightly… more refined.”
Reminiscing on his inaugural encounters and how he draws references to the intrepid artists who come before him, he recalls reporting on Warhol in seventh-grade art class. “I think he’s altered the way the world sees things, like a great painter should. Bonnard is exceptional at this as well, albeit in a very different way.”
The prodigious illustrations are stripped of pretension and echo our longing for a return to childlike truths untouched by more self-serious tendencies, even if adorned on the stationery of the illustrious Beverly Wilshire Hotel or Chateau Marmont. “I want it to stay as fresh as possible, never overcooked.” When pressed about his selection of subject matter, he maintains his devotion to spontaneity: “There is no process. I just see things or remember something, and an idea comes to mind, follow the itch and see where it goes.” The hotelier names etched against the pages are sites of creative provocation. The drawings themselves are, he adds, “loose, gestural and immediate.” McGregor’s embrace of the immediate, the gestural and the unpolished offers a refreshing reminder of the essential truths we often leave behind in the rush to complicate.
Room Service is a compilation of over 100 illustrations on hotel stationery from around the world, presented by the lauded Paragon Books, while new exhibitions on the horizon include Voyage Voyage at Hashimoto Contemporary in New York. With these and more, McGregor’s playful, instinctive lines continue to sketch a world unencumbered by rules. It is easy to see why the artist finds himself attuned to the zeitgeist, with his work exhibited and commissioned at New York hospitality hotspots. Cultivating a strong affinity for the ephemeral and the overlooked, McGregor has conceived a place where young hearts draw freely.
