ROBERT MC CAULE Y
1
2
April 11–27, 2019 Scottsdale Artist Reception | April 11 | 6:30–9:00pm
ROBERT MC CAULE Y Diorama Glass
Jackson Hole | Scottsdale | AltamiraArt.com
3
Lodestone Oil on canvas | 40 x 30 inches Enquire
4
5
Diorama Glass Most sustained bear sightings occur across a glass partition: you ensconced in your bubble of entertainment and he confined to a finely-staged cage; your perspective skewed by “safe” distance. The glass is for the bear’s protection as much as yours, you tell yourself.
6
Robert McCauley paints a different narrative of the interaction between animals and humans, based not on fear or conflict, but rather communion and conversation. He places the bear in the center of the composition à la 19th century portraiture—a mimesis replete with underpainting and glazing. This centrality establishes a mutual gaze thus casting the bear and you— the viewer—as coprotagonists in a story yet told. “The animals are stoic and confrontational, like Willem de Kooning’s women,” he says. “I remove all references to predator and prey. They stand eye-to-eye with the viewer, and seem to be asking, ‘Well?’” Well, what? As the poet Billy Collins once said about McCauley’s work: his clarion call is both “literal and symbolic at the same time.” Microphones often appear, awaiting your response. So what will you do to dissolve the barrier between humans and animals, us and them, passivity and activism? Don’t abide by the diorama glass, he urges with his brushstrokes, see through it. See the animals and their reality. See our reality.
Consciousness born of getting up close with nature, as he has done: after spending 35 years leading the art department at Rockford University in Illinois, he returned to his native Washington state, building himself a compact studio in the forest behind his house. A creature of routine, he enters his studio at 4am, greeting his canvases with a hello and then a hard look: “Opening the studio door, turning on the lights and looking at the painting in process: this is the only way I have the chance to see my work as an objective critic, albeit with an element of subjectivity and authorship.” This critical self-assessment—this daily struggle to leave assumptions behind and let the painting become what it must—elevates his work to the realm of poetry. “Words, characters come and go,” he says of his process. “I sit back and watch.” A humility earned. A humanity conveyed—to transfixing affect. “By the time the viewer gets his or her nose up against the work, they discover the politic inherent in the painting,” he says. “My only hope is that the collective subconscious will act.”
7
Diorama Glass, Arctic Canary Oil on canvas | 60 x 36 inches Enquire
8
9
Angel #3 Oil on canvas | 17 x 27 inches Enquire
10
11
Hostile Environment Oil on canvas | 18 x 24 inches Enquire
12
13
Aquarium Glass, Multitasking Oil on canvas | 36 x 48 inches Enquire
14
Aquarium Glass, Hide Your Good Work Oil on canvas | 25 x 36 inches Enquire
15
Good Sharks Oil on canvas | 29 x 35 inches Enquire
16
17
Great American Survey Oil on canvas | 18 x 24 inches Enquire
18
19
Beekeeper V Oil on canvas | 30 x 24 inches Enquire
20
21
Working Hive Oil on canvas | 36 x 24 inches Enquire
22
23
No More Bad Bear Stories Oil on canvas | 27 inches (diameter) Enquire
24
Beekeeper Oil on canvas | 24 inches (diameter) Enquire
25
On Thin Ice Oil on canvas | 36 x 48 inches Enquire
26
27
Ursus Americanus Oil on canvas | 24 x 32 inches Enquire
28
Trained to Only See the Picturesque Oil on canvas | 24 x 18 inches Enquire
29
Above it All Oil on canvas | 30 x 24 inches Enquire
30
31
Morphing Oil on canvas | 30 x 37 inches Enquire
32
33
7038 E Main Street | Scottsdale, Arizona 85251 AltamiraArt.com | 480-949-1256
34