The Arts of Barbara McCauley

Contemporary American Southwest painter, Barbara McCauley, created artwork up into her early 20's, including drawings and oil paintings of both landscapes and figures. But the demands first of college, then marriage, motherhood and full-time teaching left little time or space to continue with painting, and she turned her creative energies entirely to writing and poetry.

Over the next 35 years, she produced two books of poetry (Finding the Balance, Red Hill Press, San Francisco, 1977; The Darkness That Was There All Along, XLibris, Philadelphia, 2006) two commercial novels written under a pseudonym, three works of non-fiction, and a memoir about her sister's suicide. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies., including The Nation, Milkweed Chronicle, Chelsea Review, Beloit Poetry Review, etc. 

Earlier publications appear under her first married name, Barbara Hughes, and in the last ten years, under her maiden name of McCauley. She was also the principal writer for an Emmy award-winning educational television program, Pochtlan, produced in Los Angeles in 1974-75.

In the early 90's, she returned to painting, first abstract artwork, then the American Southwest landscape she lived in, using a rich, colorful palette as the landscape suggested. Her early landscapes included the barns and adobe houses of the New Mexican villages in a style uniquely her own, where the solitude and spiritual quality of the land was evoked with a freedom of bright, yet seductive, color.

In 2001, she turned to figurative paintings, a series of 24 acrylic paintings, called "Woman Alone", in which a single figure emerges out of the black gessoed canvas, each of the women deeply engrossed in something, either actively or contemplatively. Haunting and moving, the women in these artworks are "subjects" as the artist says, rather than objects, which is what the figure so often is when painted as a nude, and they create an emotion and a mood, a presence that commands attention. All 24 of the paintings in this series have gone into private collections, except for one which the artist has kept for herself.

In the last year, McCauley has returned to painting woman. Again, the figure is alone here, but these women are immersed in the life and background surrounding them. They are potent, sometimes exotic, all of them passionate in a deeply human way.

The artist continues to paint landscapes as well, and has painted some lush landscapes and seascapes from Mexico where she has been spending the winter months over the past few years: Gardens, sunsets, the ocean, and, this past year, more abstract, visionary paintings, all still boldly colorful with a full expression of mood and emotion.

McCauley's artwork has been exhibited in several one-person shows and many two-person and group shows. Her paintings are in private and public collections all over the United States, and Canada, as well as in Europe and in Australia.