Marcos Gago is a visual artist and graphic designer. He grew up in New York and received a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts. He has studied printmaking at Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Lower East Side Printshop, and Manhattan Graphics Center. He splits his time between New York City and Solebury, PA, where his studio is based.

Gago has built his career as an art director and graphic designer, working at reputable companies including Condé Nast, Hearst, and Warner Brothers Records. He has been an art director at American Vogue, Seventeen, Mirabella, and Town & Country magazines, among others.

His background as a graphic designer informs his attention to detail and composition. Yet it’s his training in fine art and enduring fascination with the natural world that drives his creative process today.

His work explores everyday life, filtered through emotion and instinct rather than literal depiction. His practice spans printmaking and oil painting, drawing inspiration from nature, personal photographs, media, memories, and experiences.

For Gago, creating is a way to process, question, and make sense of his surroundings. When he begins a piece, he doesn’t set out with a fixed end goal in mind. Instead, the process itself dictates and narrates the outcome, an ongoing dialogue that guides each decision and keeps the work constantly evolving.

His time in art school was steeped in the Neo-expressionist of New York, an influence that has never left him. That foundation sits alongside graphic design history from the 1950s onward, and his use of color is informed by traditions like Fauvism and color field paintings.