ROBERT MCCAULEY: AMERICAN FICTION

Exhibition Date: March 31, 2018 to June 10, 2018
Reception Date: Saturday, March 31, 2018 - 1:00pm

In partnership with Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, MoNA presents Robert McCauley: American Fiction, co-curated by BIMA's Chief Curator Greg Robinson and MoNA's former Northwest Legacy Projects Curator Kathleen Moles. Greg Robinson will give a talk on March 31 at 1pm. 

Robert McCauley’s solo exhibition American Fiction features work from the 1990s forward. McCauley’s main themes revolve around worlds in collision, addressing topics of cultural displacement and destruction, as well as our relationships with nature and the environment. He speaks to global issues, yet his art has a distinctive Northwest feeling with iconic and familiar subjects such as bears, mountains, and long-lost fishing holes.

McCauley was born in 1946 and raised in Mount Vernon, WA. Coming from generations of loggers, his childhood was full of watching the forests fall, something that proved to be rather difficult.

Originally interested in oceanography, he switched to art in college. McCauley graduated from Western Washington University in 1969, and in 1972 was awarded his Master of Fine Arts Degree from Washington State University. McCauley became professor of art at Rockford College in Illinois (now Rockford University) in 1972. In 1982 he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Over the years he also received a fellowship in painting from the Illinois Arts Council, and a research grant (on Kwakwaka’wakw Culture, Vancouver Island) from Rockford. He served for many years as Art Department Chair at Rockford, until he retired in 2008.

Throughout his career, McCauley has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and represented by several galleries nationally. Since returning to Mount Vernon in 2008 he continues to paint full-time. McCauley’s work is represented locally by Linda Hodges Gallery (Seattle, WA), and nationally by Gail Severn Gallery (Ketchum, ID), Valley Fine Arts (Aspen, Colorado), Visions West Contemporary (Colorado, Wyoming and Montana), and Altamira Fine Art (Wyoming and Arizona).

- Greg Robinson and Kathleen Moles

McCauley draws from various themes and periods in Western art history and literature. He employs a Luminist style in his romantic yet somber paintings, and easily jumps to the surreal with juxtapositions of the natural world and humankind. He belies the casual viewer through his quirky senses of endearment and humor, but he will lead the more curious and willing into deeper layers of meaning. The artist challenges past beliefs which resulted in mandates such as ‘Manifest Destiny’ and ‘Westward Ho.’

McCauley’s artwork nods to the writings of philosophers such as Umberto Eco (Foucault’s Pendulum) who said, “Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn’t exist. It’s the permutations that matter.” Viewers often experience the sensation of being watched – McCauley’s paintings seem to cast a gaze, and we are momentarily still. We are caught in the moment, suspended in limbo, and pointed towards an uncertain future. McCauley wants us to revisit and question history, so we can collectively forge a better destiny.