Dan McCrary

Dan McCrary

About The Artist:
It was inevitable that Dan McCrary would become an automotive artist. He was born in 1949 in Raleigh, N.C. By the mid 1950’s, his lifelong passion for cars was being fueled by weekly outings to a local speedway, and on the street the everyday passing of the exuberant designs of the fifties was adding all that much more fuel to the fire. All his childhood drawings were of cars – no planes, boats, nothing but cars!

During his teen years, Dan and some of his gearhead friends took up guitars, and this started a parallel foray into the life of a musician. Interspersed with college years and two years in the army, this lasted until Dan was about 30, when the rigors of the road life began to wear thin. It was at this point that he took up the pursuit of automotive art in a serious way. His work began with a pretty straightforward “car portrait” approach, and over the years has evolved into the highly reflective (and sometimes rusty) sections of the automotive subject that he currently emphasizes.

The many years of this single-minded pursuit of automotive fine art have led to awards, (including the first Dave Holls Award given at Meadowbrook, and the Richard A. Teague Award), and places in quite a few prominent private and corporate collections. In addition his work has been seen in many publications, including Road & Track Street Rodder, Auto Aficianado, Hemmings Classic Car, and Automobile Quarterly.

Artist’s Statement:
There are endless artistic explorations to be discovered on, in, and about the automobile. Its surface is a limitless supply of color and contour; compositions to be isolated – painted in a realistic technique, yet abstract in the way that a section of chrome and pastel can be removed from its larger context and assume an aesthetic all its own. Reflected images of other vehicles or surroundings can play along the shape of a fender and take on the effects of a “fun-house mirror”. In that uniquely American archive that is the “junk yard” there are explorations of a different kind of mood; the irony of finding a once-proud luxury car, the pride and joy of days long past now in a state of decay, has its own magnetism… plus, as an added “bonus”; the contrarian in me loves to stand on its head the image that polite society holds of an old car as nothing but an “eyesore”.

Categories:
Classic Car, Exotic Car, Hot Rod/Custom Car, Motorsport, Muscle Car, Photography, Portrait

Website:

http://www.dmccraryart.com

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