When Worlds Collide

Edge of Town (Niagara), 1999
Oil on Canvas, Frames

Robert McCauley is professor and chairman of the art department at Rockford College (Illinois). He earned a BA at Western Washington University (Bellingham) and an MFA at Washington State University (Pullman). His work has been exhibited literally from coast to coast and he is represented by galleries in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Sun Valley. He is the recipient of numerous grants, including a fellowship form the National Endowment for the Arts. Works in the Luther College exhibit are courtesy of Perimeter Gallery, Chicago.

McCauley’s formative years were spent in the American Northwest where both his father and grandfather were loggers, experiences that continue to inform his work.

Hybrid, 2004
Oil on Canvas

Regina Hackett, art critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, wrote about McCauley for his recent retrospective at the Rockford Art Museum: "[He] has been living outside the Northwest for a long time, and still there is about his work a distinctly Northwest sensibility, of nature flowing up the streets into stores, classrooms and theaters to assert itself amid human culture.

Twilight in the Wilderness, 2002
Oil on Canvas

Out of our hats we pull real rabbits, and our real gardens are full of imaginary toads.

Excavating the Minimalist Storeroom
Oil on Canvas

In ’Smallpox Drawings,’ McCauley drew Northwest Coast Native American totem poles, lines of them in oil pastel and pencil. He painted them lightly, as emblems for the people whose world views shook as they collided in contact with less subtle others."

Installation View (Smallpox Drawings)