Barry McGee was born in 1966 in San Francisco, California, where he currently lives and works. He received his BFA in painting and printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991.  Taking inspiration from his upbringing in the Bay Area, folk and craft art, Mexican Muralists, geometric abstraction, and cartoons, McGee’s work balances the formal concerns of fine art with populist representations and communal modes of working. In doing so, he creates a body of work that combines the disparate worlds of street art and fine art. Through his drawings, paintings, and mixed-media installations, the artist creates a visual lexicon that addresses the struggles of contemporary urban life, looking toward his local community while building a world of his own characters, monikers, and motifs.