Dan McCleary
Dan McCleary paints simple pictures of ordinary people: a man in a doughnut shop scratching his lottery ticket, a young woman putting on her socks, a chef staring out from behind a counter, a Seven-Eleven clerk. The simplicity of these images, however, belies McCleary’s keen observation of the often tense inter-personal dynamics which play a prominent role in our daily lives. His figures sit or stand, quietly engaged in thought. They gaze out at the viewer from behind a cash register or contemplate a cup of coffee. However, while McCleary’s figures appear as static, well-modeled personages in balanced, refined compositions, his nuanced images are far from placid. In depicting chefs or convenience store workers and yuppies dressed for work, McCleary provides narratives and psychologies to a host of characters that, although they are an integral part of modern-day life, are generally forgotten. The results are unsettling, as McCleary subtly confronts the viewer with images of striking familiarity, but fleeting, undetermined meaning. Using an economy of means to construct his narratives, McCleary creates lyrical and mysterious paintings and prints out of only a threadbare network of essential details, gestures, and expressions. Dan McCleary has worked at Magnolia on a number of occasions since 1988, producing several editions of etchings and lithographs, as well as monoprints and hand-colored images. He shows regularly throughout the United States, most recently at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco, CA, Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles, CA; and David Beitzel Gallery in New York. His work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum, the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.
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