Paintings
12 works
James McQueen Book Spines | Orange For Sale
James McQueen
Book Spines | Orange
Acrylic and mixed-media on canvas
101.6 × 152.4 cm
About this work
Book Spines | Orange is a 101.6 × 152.4 cm acrylic and mixed-media canvas in which James McQueen renders his library shelf motif in a warm, energetic orange palette. The work presents the familiar arrangement of stacked book spines — each suggesting a distinct volume, title, and character — bathed in tones that range from the deep amber of old leather to the vibrant citrus of a contemporary paperback. The orange palette gives the composition a luminous vitality that is both joyful and inviting. In the orange version, the palette does specific work: it evokes autumnal library warmth, the glow of late afternoon reading, and the vibrancy of a collection that is actively used and loved. The horizontal canvas format mirrors the natural orientation of the bookshelf, allowing the eye to move across the composition as it would across a real shelf, pausing at individual spines before moving on. McQueen's mixed-media approach builds the surface with material richness appropriate to the subject. On canvas and at this scale, Book Spines | Orange is a major work — one that transforms the private pleasure of the personal library into a public celebration. For collectors and readers alike, it is an enduringly appealing work that speaks to the pleasures of cultural accumulation and the visual abundance of the well-stocked shelf. McQueen's Book Spines series has become one of the defining motifs of his practice, instantly recognisable and widely collected.
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Edition & Provenance
- Medium
- Acrylic and mixed-media on canvas
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