 A child of the 40s
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Meet Barrie Maguire I'm a child of the 40s who went off to Notre Dame to worship Football. Before I knew it I was married, a father, and working as an Art Director at a big Advertising Agency in their Phila., New York and Chicago offices. After seven years, while working in the Chicago office, I threw it all away to come home to Phila. and open my own tiny ad agency. I must insert here that my last TV commercial in Chicago won the "Best Humorous" Clio and went on to be named 1971's "Best TV Commercial in the World." No kidding! A few years later, I finally got a real job in Kansas City as a Creative Director at Hallmark Cards. By now I was a single parent, and I dragged my five children, kicking and screaming, all the way to Kansas. After eight good years (regular paychecks) I threw it all away again. The very day I resigned, I met my future wife, Karen, who had been hoping I could get her a job at Hallmark. A year later we married and a month after the wedding we moved back East to the tiny, bucolic borough of Narberth in the Phila. suburbs. There, while Karen trudged off to work each day, and the new step-brothers, Ted and Terry, went off to high school, I sat in my converted garage/studio in sandals, tee-shirt and shorts and designed, illustrated (and sometimes wrote) humor books. In 1987, I started doing op-ed art for the Inquirer and ten years later, I came up with the idea of delivering op-ed art to newspapers via the Internet: NewsArt.com. Then came Ireland! In 1998, after a magical first visit to Ireland, I began painting for the first time since college. Ireland captured me... and I've been painting the Irish people, animals, and green patchwork quilt countryside ever since. I've even tried to capture her mystical nature as well, and it's the rare year that doesn't include magic time in Ireland. I come from a family of artists going back four generations. Three of my six wonderful children are (full or part time) artists, a fourth is a musician, a fifth a writer, and the sixth actually has a job. You can see a lot of Maguire family art, including work by my mother and grandparents, at www.maguiregallery.com. I have published several essays and my local commentary, "The Burro of Narberth," is posted from time to time on the community bulletin board at the Narberth train station. I recently self-published an e-book novel based on my experiences in the Greeting Card business. It's fun and scary and called The Art Factory. Once video cameras shrunk to pocket size, I started making videos, visual poems, of Ireland, of Echo Lake, my upstate New York "summer studio," of County fairs and Irish fiddlers and explorations of my paintings. These videos have become a passion for me. You can see them on my Video Page. I am not the Barry McGuire who sang "Eve of Destruction." Neither am I the McGwire who hit 70 homeruns, nor the Barry who hit 700, (and I've never used steroids, as you already know if you've ever seen me in a bathing suit). Although I met my talented wife, Karen, in Kansas City, she's originally from Lubbock, Texas. Karen is a freelance editor, indexer, and a compiler of Day-at-a-Glance calendars. She's worked on books and calendars for such luminaries as the late Roger Ebert, Dear Abby, Dr. Ruth, Dave Barry, and Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. And she's currently working on her 29th year of a "Spiritual Moments" calendar. Because she also does an annual Lefthanders calendar she knows the life story of every single famous lefty/southpaw who ever lived. She sings like an angel, plays piano and bass guitar, and has beautiful feet.
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"I strive to create a sense of exuberant whimsy, one that is both preposterous and ridiculous, while seeking a nonsensical sublime." (only kidding)
 My Mother, Dolly, posed for this painting. She passed away at the age of 89 in 2004. She was a gifted artist.
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