ANGIE SILVY JENNIFER MAERZ
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For married artists Clare ROJAS and Barry McGEE, distinct CREATIVE spaces make way for ORIGINAL FORMS
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The names of San Francisco art stars Clare Rojas and Barry McGee are often mentioned in tandem. It stems from the fact that they’re married, occasionally collaborate, came out of the loosely knit Mission School movement of the 1990s, and were both featured in the influential 2008 underground art documentary Beautiful Losers. But creatively, the couple (who married in 2005 and share a 15-year-old daughter, Asha, born to McGee’s late wife, artist Margaret Kilgallen) exist in parallel universes. She’s a painter, musician and writer who crafts powerful large-scale narratives from a folk-leaning perspective. His striking psychedelic patterns, illustrative painted portraits of old men on liquor bottles, and sculptures of graffiti taggers celebrate a gritty urban vitality. Their differences intensify when you visit their workspaces. Rojas affectionately calls McGee a hoarder, and says part of the reason she got her studio seven years ago, having previously worked out of their house in the city’s Mission neighborhood, was because “he takes over every space that I have, so I need to have a room of my own.” Invoking Virginia Woolf, she adds: “Every woman should have [her] own space.” Rojas, 40, and McGee, 50, work on opposite sides of Potrero Hill. She paints in