The Art of Jim Magner
…is presented in six collective series: US Capitol , DC * Sabino Canyon, Arizona * Lake Braddock, Virginia * Santa Fe, NM * Church Creek * Old stuff & Miscellany.
This is a living site. Paintings will be added, removed, resized or updated. My comments on the work will be added or changed. I will soon have a Facebook page for appropriate and relevant remarks.
Capitol Series
The Capitol is not a building. It is a set of ideas. It is people. Good people. Evil people. Mostly just people passing through. It is no color. It is every color. It is the color of freedom, or the color of lost freedoms. It can welcome the people of the world. Or it can be barricaded. Locked up and fenced off. Then it becomes a dangerous place. A very dangerous place. I have included a few paintings of senators who were loved by some and hated by others…and that’s the way they liked it.
Ted & Janis 
McCain 
The Solitary Ted 
Sunrise in May 
Stevens 
Cap Hill House–WC. 
DancingHouse 
Winter Magic on the Mall 
DC Sunrise 
Spirits 
Independence Day 
In Session 
Dissapearing Trees 
Capitol Grotto 
Capitol Gang 
Cap Hill House–WC. 
Byrd 
Big Green Cap 
Assumption of the Senate Ethics Committee Bright Lights 
No Access 
Joggers in June
Sabino Canyon
Sabino Canyon is near Tucson. The rocky creek flows down from the top of the Catalina Mountains. It is a wonderful place with stone bridges and ponds and many kinds of trees. It is full of life. I used to camp there and run up the road in the early morning to watch the sun turning the rock walls crimson, hawks catching an updraft, quail scurrying, cactus wrens getting busy, bobcats drinking from the rushing, singing stream. And then I would settle in somewhere and paint.
I have recently done a series of paintings, prints, and drawings from a pen & ink drawing I did in the canyon in my sophomore year (1962). It was in preparation for my first oil painting. That one didn’t come out so well.
Lake Braddock
My family, my wife and I and five children, moved to the Washington DC area from Tucson in 1977. I became a legislative assistant to a US senator from Arizona. We moved into a terrific little planned community in Northern Virginia called “Lake Braddock.” Our backyard was a forest fantasy for the kids. The little lake was the center of their lives. It was a place of growing up and making friends and dreaming.
Santa Fe Series
I have been to Santa Fe to paint several times over the years. Here are a few of those works.
Church Creek
Karen and I moved here to the Annapolis area a few years back. We have a studio overlooking the creek. This little tributary connects to the larger Church Creek which leads to the South River which flows to the Chesapeake Bay. It is all part of the same estuary. It was once an Indian camp. I see them sometimes. There are holes in the air…maybe gaps in time. The herons, osprey, Canada Geese, egrets, king fishers, mallards, hooded mergansers and other ducks are timeless. Shad spawn here. But developers dump their dirt and maybe contaminants. It is changing. We weep with the tribal elders.
