Robert McCauley: New Paintings

Premiere Northwest artist and Skagit Valley resident Robert McCauley will open an exhibition of his sensitively rendered bear portraits on September 7th 2017 at the Linda Hodges Gallery.

The undercurrent and theme in all of McCauley’s paintings is nature as a metaphor. These animals vie for attention as if attempting to say, "we are in this together so please value us." A self-described fictionalized history revisionist, McCauley gathers animals as if they’re all on the Raft of the Medusa, adrift, with one common concern: survival.

"I choose to present a moment that does not immediately conjure a doomed future, but rather a moment when nature is in limbo, with a future still to be determined."

The Bainbridge Island Museum of Art will exhibit a traveling retrospective, with an accompanying book, of McCauley’s work this fall. “Robert McCauley: American Fiction” opens there October 14 and runs through February 4, 2018. In the spring of 2018 it will open at the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington.

McCauley was professor and chair of the Art Department at Rockford College 1972–2008. He has exhibited in Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, New York, and many other locations. Widely collected, McCauley has earned many prestigious awards, including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. He is a 2017 recipient of the Luminaries Artist Award at the Museum of Northwest Art. Born in Mt. Vernon, Washington and currently a resident there, Robert McCauley attended Western Washington University and received an MFA from Washington State University.