A Southern Master Painter : William McCullough

Charleston, SC - William McCullough, Southern Painter: A Retrospective Exhibition will be on view at the City Gallery at Waterfront Park in Charleston May 20 to August 12, 2006. Sponsored by the City of Charleston’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the exhibition is part of the city-wide Piccolo Spoleto Festival, which presents artistic talent from across the region. Artistic exhibitions often elicit critical questions and comments. Fortunately, McCullough opens his studio to the interested and on rare occasion will actually discuss his process. In his downtown Charleston studio in February of 2006, William McCullough stood in front of his easel, palette in hand, intuitively placing paint on his canvas. Although committed to depicting the objects before him, McCullough would accentuate a shadow, and then omit an unnecessary detail. The process was not a mechanical translation of nature onto canvas. McCullough may have been painting the objects in front of him, but his subjective consciousness was nonetheless in control. McCullough’s subjective realism posits his work in the contemporary dialogue and connects him to historic precedents. In the 1960’s McCullough apprenticed with Robert Brackman, who had studied under two great American realists, Robert Henri and George Bellows. The Art Spirit, a compilation of Henri’s teachings, and primary accounts by Kenneth Bates documenting Brackman’s approach to painting and teaching, prefigure McCullough’s process. Despite these similarities, the present implications of McCullough’s painting are unique to the contemporary context. While critics question the relevancy of contemporary painting, McCullough’s art not only enters the dialogue but commands attention. McCullough insists that realist painting is “painting based on the effects of light on forms and subjects derived from nature.” The still life studies of McCullough exemplifies this belief. Although a composition included a bookshelf, several bottles, a small painting, and a stationary fan, the true content of the work is none of these things. Rather, dynamic side lighting created a rhythm of shadows across the composition. Every stroke emphasized this rhythm. This method suggests affinities for Robert Henri. McCullough’s purpose is to create aesthetic compositions using harmonies of light, color, and form. As a result, light begins to define the whole canvas rather than the physicality of individual objects. Light unifies McCullough’s compositions, and independent objects become divorced from their appearances. McCullough uses his visual and mental perception to manifest paint’s possibilities. His painting is a subjective response to nature. According to McCullough his work, both process and product, is about his “experience as a human being.” McCullough does not paint from a cerebral imaginary place; he paints what he sees. However, just as Brackman and Henri it is important for the artist to paint beyond mere physical reality. McCullough paints the personality beneath the surface of objects. Consequently, he paints objects as they relate to each other, as members of a relationship. McCullough determines these relationships, and thus his realism is relentlessly subjective, a departure from nature. Not an imitation. McCullough’s canvases are not passive; but rather, they act on the viewer through compositional tension and balance between horizontals and verticals. McCullough’s interest in light on forms is reminiscent of nineteenth century Impressionism, which convoluted the distinction between visual perception and subjective consciousness. Renoir in the Kitchen (2005) is another example of McCullough’s use of light as a unifying agent. After close examination pots and pans seem to arbitrarily sit on the stovetop and bottles and bags seem randomly strewn on the counter. However, the strong side-light from the peripheral window relates all of the objects to each other. Consequently, the objects become what the light dictates, and all are balanced as part of the whole. Despite the visual affinities to impressionism, the title, Renoir in the Kitchen, overtly alludes to the historic technique. While Impressionism is the ultimate realism, relying on strict observation, it is also the precursor to Modernism. Although the Impressionists were committed to depicting contemporary life, they also valued the inherent subjectivity of the human eye and aesthetic composition. Brackman, a pivotal figure in McCullough’s art training, epitomizes such subjective/objective dualities in modern-realism. McCullough is not an Impressionist, but he does revisit historic techniques, a phenomenon of the post-Modern context. McCullough demonstrates that there is much left for painting to accomplish. Visit City Gallery at Waterfront Park