To say that Buck McCain
recreates the emotions and spirit of the American experience is to succumb to
the shallow fantasies of lesser men.
What Buck McCain does, rather, is translate the dreams and history of
the Western sensibility through the powerful and eloquent language of his
art. It is a language that comes
naturally to this artist born and raised on a working cattle ranch in southern California in 1943. Somehow, the reality of the rugged Western life
and the persistent attraction of art and painting were reconciled over the
years, although it took the bright young scholarship student several detours
through the disciplines of science and philosophy to finally find his way to an
art major in college. McCain eventually
studied painting and sculpture in California, New Mexico, Mexico,
and most importantly, Europe. The classical training and international
exposure received on the European continent never distracted him from what he
loved most. Even while in Switzerland
some bond to the Western sensibility compelled him to paint scenes from the
life and history he knew so well.
McCain is a complex,
multidimensional talent who is constantly testing himself, pushing beyond the
last triumph to the next challenge. An
inspired painter, he has been influenced by Rembrandt and intrigued – but never
overwhelmed – by the French Impressionists, soaking in bits and pieces of
technique, using them to forge his own style and identity. He expresses an appreciation for the color
and vitality of the American Impressionists, a love that spills over into his
own work. And no matter what the
accomplishments of the past, there is always the quest of new challenges,
moving from canvas to clay to bronze and back again with ease, seeking new
vents for a restless creative energy.
That capacity to comfortably
move between mediums of expression accounts for McCain’s emergence as one of
the recognized masters of modern monumental bronzes. As obsessed with perfection and balance as he
is with scale, McCain betrays a strong affinity for classical Greek form in his
sculpture. Like Rodin, whose work he has
admired and studied, McCain seems to possess an instinctive proclivity for mass
and texture and balance. In silhouette,
his sculptures carry an energy and presence usually reserved for animate
beings. The emergence of character, even
personality, bespeaks the vitality that the sculptor brings to his work. He continues to investigate new creative
avenues, from jewelry and design to sculpting in stone. Unpredictable in his intelligence and talent,
he currently pursues new artistic dimensions from his ranch in Arizona.
You know you are looking at a great work of art when you are
so deeply into the mood and the subject, you cease being aware of either artist
or technique. Everyone pulls art into
themselves through the screen of their personality, memory and soul, and in so
doing they make it their own, different from everyone else. When you encounter a great work of art some
part of you is changed forever.
Most of us think realism means the way things are; the
problem is each of us has a slightly different view of how things are. Ask four people about the same sculpture or
painting they saw and you will get some general agreement, but also some
strange and wonderful divergence. In
paintings or sculptures, the artist shows the viewer some very convincing
realism in key areas- the remaining areas can be only a suggestion and the
viewer will fill in the missing detail in their own mind. It is true that the artist sometimes gets
paid for having the viewer do part of the work.
I find many questions are not answered by the mind. Many times when I am painting I am coming not
from an intellectual place, but from the heart.
A color either feels right or it doesn’t. Many things speak to the feelings in a way
the mind can’t hear. Can you define
beauty? No, but you feel it
unequivocally.
In sculpting you do not get to paint the landscape or the
atmosphere around your subject. You
cannot rely on the trick of color, nor can you control the lighting. It is just about form, light and shadow,
negative and positive space.
In sculpture you are expressing one second frozen in
time. In a painting you can suggest
linear time and movement. You can build
the atmosphere around the moving figure, with dust around a running horse. You can not make dust out of bronze, nor can
you blur the image. Bronze is an
unrelenting metal and to suggest movement, you have to resort only to the form.
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