A self-styled “rural modernist,” McArthur Binion takes a uniquely personal approach to abstract painting. Combining collage, drawing, and painting, he overlays mementos from his own life with repeating patterns and forms. Pages from address books and journals, and even copies of Binion’s own passport and birth certificate, form a kind of template for layers of black, white, and brown grids. From afar, the work can appear conceptual; it is only on closer examination that the viewer realizes its intimate nature. In this way, Binion juxtaposes the individual and the collective to create a complex representation of selfhood.

 McArthur Binion lives and work in Chicago. He received his BFA from Wayne State University, Detroit, in 1971, and his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1973. He has been a professor of art at Columbia College in Chicago since 1992. His work is held in the collections of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., among others.

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