Alan Magee was born in Newton, Pennsylvania in 1947. Beginning in 1969 Magee worked as in Illustrator in New York for such magazinesas Time, Atlantic, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times.

During the 1970s Magee produced paintings for the covers of books by Graham Greene, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, John Irving, Yukio Mishima, Stanley Elkin, John Neihardt, Ken Kesey, Agatha Christie, and many others. In the late 70's he began concentrating on his career as a painter and fine art printmaker.