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Alysanne McGaffey
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Alysanne McGaffey (1931-2018)
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Bay Area Figurative and Landscape Painter
In 2018, Alysanne McGaffey passed away. During the decade prior, we had the opportunity to get to know Alysanne and purchase pieces from her directly. In late 2024, for the first time since her passing, we were invited by Alysanne’s surviving partner to select works from the pieces they had kept in their personal collection. These works are now beginning to trickle into the gallery, with a show planned for 2025.
These uncovered works, spanning her entire career from the 1950s through her final years, are among the most historically significant and exciting pieces we have had the chance to acquire. Many come from her early Bay Area Figurative years, while others are personal favorites from her later decades, when she painted the California coast in a distinctive style that combined realism, abstraction, and expressionism.
The following text is based on an essay that Alysanne McGaffey wrote for us about her life and work. We have updated it recently after uncovering more details since her passing regarding her exhibitions, collectors, and teachers:
On the West Coast, particularly at The San Francisco Art Institute and in the surrounding neighborhood of North Beach, a cultural renaissance took root. Here, the Bay Area Figurative style began to emerge, blending the gestural handling of paint—often applied thickly—with figurative subject matter. Influenced by the works of David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Hassel Smith, and Richard Diebenkorn, this movement spanned nearly two decades. Amidst this scene, Alysanne McGaffey was developing as a painter, honing her craft.
McGaffey began her studies at the Art Institute in the mid-1950s. She studied with a roster of prominent artists, including Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo, Bill Brown, Joan Brown, Dorr Bothwell, Manuel Neri, Walter Kuhlman, Nathan Oliveira, James Weeks, Fred Martin, Ivan Magdijrkoff, and James Budd Dixon. The artists and instructors at the Institute often adopted an informal teaching style, encouraging students to learn through practice. As McGaffey explains, "You were really forced to come to terms with your own ideas of craft, get excited about doing it, the act of painting—not talking about it, analyzing it to death." San Francisco's bohemian society was small enough that various disciplines, such as painters, poets, actors, and writers, frequently interacted and argued about the "great bones of contention." After working a full day in the Financial District, McGaffey would often take an art class, do life drawing with a small group of her peers, or work at home on printmaking projects. In these groups, McGaffey painted images of fellow artists and instructors, Jay De Feo, Joan Brown and Hayward King.
At the Grand Opening of the new Hertz Hall at UC Berkeley, McGaffey saw her first David Park painting: "He had done a backdrop for the world premiere of Darius Milhaud’s Orphée. The backdrop was a very large canvas, a gold lyre on a rich brown field. The work and the configuration of events were, and still are, very charged for me. It is close in feeling to the way I still relate to Rothko's painting; that a simple painting could speak so deeply to the inner person, the psyche—amazing."
McGaffey's education continued to evolve after completing extensive coursework in art history (with Fred Martin) and science. Her focus turned toward teaching, and she received a Community College Instructor in Art Certificate from San Francisco State University, completing a student-teacher internship at two local community colleges. In 1978, McGaffey helped found the Infant Development Center of San Francisco, furthering her commitment to education. In the 1980s, Alysanne moved to Pacifica, CA (just south of San Francisco and on the coast) with her life partner, Kathy Meeh. Close to the sea and landscape she loved so much, Alysanne began to focus her work on these vistas in both oil and watercolor.
Throughout her career, McGaffey had numerous solo and group exhibitions. Some of her most notable exhibitions include solo shows at the San Francisco Art Institute in Spring 1962 and at Kelley Galleries in February-March 1968. She also had her work featured in group exhibitions at venues such as the University of Washington’s 1951 Sculpture Exhibit and the 12th Annual Liturgical and Religious Exhibit at St. Columba in Inverness (1970).
Collectors of McGaffey's work include James Cram, George Darling, Weymon Lew, Tange Salley, Laurence Sisk, J.R. Goldsborough, Jane Yick, Judy Lutz, Mrs. S.H. Friedman, Robin & Gary Odaffer, Hayward King, Barth Marshall, William Roi, and Madeline Gleason.
McGaffey was deeply involved in the arts community and held leadership roles in several organizations, including the Coastal Arts League, Pacifica's Cultural Arts Commission, the Peninsula Chapter of Women's Caucus for Art, the Peninsula Arts Council (formerly ARTshare of San Mateo County), and the Peninsula Museum of Art.
We would like to thank Alysanne’s surviving partner, Kathy Meeh, for her friendship and help in updating this biography.
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