IN MEMORIAM
Anna Contes Maguire 1944 - 2023
Anna Contes was born February 6 th ,1944 in New York City,
(along with her Brother Nick Contes) to Gus and Argiro Contes, natives of the Island of Ikaria, Greece
(‘where people forget to die’), a natural ‘Blue Zone’ (of our small planet). At an early age, Anna began drawing and painting, attending William Cullen Bryant High School and the American Art School (1961) with a painting scholarship.
She frequently took herself to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturdays, to study classical antiquity, the great masters and ‘fell for the post-impressionists. Anna majored in Fine Art/Art Education at Pratt Institute (BFA/1965), and met her Husband/fellow Artist; Douglas James Maguire on the classroom fire escape, debating over tomato-feta-cheese-sandwiches (married 58 years) prior to her passing (at age 79).
Training in oil, watercolor, (pure pigment) traditional egg tempera, her earliest commissions included working as a Byzantine/Greek Orthodox iconographer and muralist.
She then attended SUNY New Paltz (M.S./1979), having already taught at Fiorello Laguardia High School of Music and Art (1970-69), at the Boston University Summer Art Program at Tanglewood (1973), at The Barlow School (1974-70) where her Daughter/fellow Artist; Alethea Maguire was born (just over the State line), among other institutions of higher learning, and having completed her Master’s Degree, she continued, as a Guest Lecturer at SUNY New Paltz.
Certified through the NYS Board of Education, Anna taught at Cairo-Durham High School (for 24 years), while simultaneously teaching courses such as: ‘Pastel, ‘Pastel-Making, ‘The Figure in Pastel, ‘Drawing through Color, ‘Drawing the Figure with Color (for 25 years) at the Woodstock School of Art; anchoring her career as an Artist/Educator, and keeping a professional art studio for 48 years (where she also formulated her own hand-made, fade proof, non-toxic pastels, and paints).
Awarded an Edwin MacDowell Art Colony Fellowship (in painting), Anna exhibited nationally throughforums such as: The Albright-Knox Art Museum, Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, Art Awareness, Zeuxis,
The Woodstock Framing Gallery, Arts Upstairs, The James Cox Gallery, The Art Society of Kingston, Mark Gruber Gallery, The Donskoj Gallery, Brik Gallery, Greenkill Gallery, Longyear Gallery, The
Woodstock Byrdcliff Guild, The James Kleinert Gallery, Elena Zang Gallery, and The Woodstock Artists Association & Museum. An avid traveler capturing still-life, the figure and the landscape, her experiences abroad in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Canada, Ireland and Greece, among other countries, further inspired her drawings, and paintings with light, color, temperature, climate, and energy.