Paintings
12 works
James McQueen Be Careful What You Wish For | 1/1 For Sale
James McQueen
Be Careful What You Wish For | 1/1
Mixed-media acrylic, spray paint, ink and silkscreen on fine art paper
66 × 99 cm
About this work
Be Careful What You Wish For is a unique 1/1 mixed-media work on fine art paper (66 × 99 cm) that takes one of the most enduring cautionary maxims and gives it the full weight of James McQueen's layered, process-driven approach. Combining acrylic, spray paint, ink, and silkscreen, McQueen transforms this ancient warning — part folk wisdom, part fatalistic humour — into a formally accomplished and visually compelling object. The phrase occupies a curious cultural space: it functions as a warning, a joke, and a philosophical observation all at once. McQueen is alert to this multiplicity, and his choice to render such expressions in carefully made works on fine art paper underscores the seriousness with which he takes the language of everyday life. The 1/1 designation ensures that this is an entirely unique work, unrepeatable and therefore singular in the way that the best art objects are. McQueen's technical process — spray paint for spontaneity, ink for gestural directness, silkscreen for graphic authority — produces surfaces of layered complexity that reward close looking. His practice invites collectors to engage with language as a material, and to recognise that the phrases by which people navigate experience are as worthy of artistic attention as any other subject. Be Careful What You Wish For distils this approach into a potent, memorable object.
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Edition & Provenance
- Medium
- Mixed-media acrylic, spray paint, ink and silkscreen on fine art paper
About James McQueen
James McQueen Paintings for Sale | Guy Hepner, New York
James McQueen is a British artist born in 1977 whose paintings sit at the intersection of Pop sensibility, material obsession, and dry British wit. He works under a pseudonym, and his identity is secondary to the work — which is the point. What matters is what ends up on the canvas.
McQueen's paintings are built, not simply applied. He works in layers — paint over paint, colour over colour — then sands the surface back to expose what lies beneath, then seals it in lacquer. The result is a depth that photographs struggle to capture. These are surfaces you need to stand in front of.
His subject matter has ranged from reinterpreted Penguin paperback covers to politically charged commentary to the large-scale mixed-media Anthology works now available through Guy Hepner. Across all of it runs a consistent preoccupation: the visual language of mass culture, rendered monumental and unfamiliar by the seriousness of the craft brought to bear on it.
McQueen has shown extensively in London and is represented in significant private collections internationally.
Guy Hepner | 177 Tenth Avenue, New York