Robert McCauley

Born and raised in Mt. Vernon, Washington, Robert McCauley has been influenced by the Northwest Coast culture in his artwork. As a child, he lived part-time on a Swinomish Indian Reservation. He received a BA from Western Washington University in 1969 and an MFA from Washington State University in 1972. Currently, he teaches at Rockford College in Illinois and is Chairman of the Art Department there.

McCauley's images contain contemporary messages, either spelled out in text on the frames or implied through the disparate juxtapositions in the work itself, concerning humanity's relationship to the environment and animal kingdom. Much of McCauley's imagery refers to his artistic predecessors with the use of romanticized landscapes similar to nineteenth century paintings. In Searching for the Roots of Abstraction (after Stubbs), a painting owned by the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the artist uses the title and the zebra subject matter to refer to a specific work completed by George Stubbs in 1763. He uses the abstract forms in nature to explore a potential genesis of one modern art movement. McCauley's oeuvre includes portraits of animals and pictures of different species in unusual and impossible relationships.