THE ARTIST

Michael McCall is multi-disciplined artist currently working in the Greater Joshua Tree artistic community. His painting medium is a combo of acrylic, enamel oil paint on reclaimed road signs. The signs, downed usually by a mishap of a vehicle driver. They are rarely recovered by the highway department, especially if McCall gets to them first in his clean-up campaign. The signs are taken to his studio and cleaned with chemicals, removing the words and the graffiti, giving the artist a clean, reflective surface to work upon. They are complete with the scars of their roadside experiences. He then creates intuitive designs, begun by initially blocking out areas, allowing the reflective quality of the surface to be seen within the painted areas. The result is a portal into another universe, into the void and beyond.

Although schooled as a painter, his artwork extends beyond painterly boundaries into areas of sculpture, photography, performance, and conceptual art.

McCall’s work has been described as a hybrid of abstraction and imagery, sometimes referred to as “Imagist.” Elements throughout the work: color, shape and form, connect him to the abstract modernists of the twentieth century, but his use of graphic symbolism walks a line between abstraction and realism. The symbols appear as abstract metaphors of a personal journey of research and self-discovery, while he exhibits a sense of humor, most notable in the titles of the pieces. In much of the work from the past three decades he uses elements from Chinese philosophy and mysticism that show a focus on an inner search, an enlightenment that tends to intrigue and amuse the viewer with his positive and harmonious outlook.