Deloss McGraw at Couturier - Los Angeles, California - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Words have many times been the lifeblood of Delos McGraw's pictures. His witty, seductive and deceptively simple replications to the poetry of WD Snodgrass were a kind of beginning for him in the early '80 He had already been painting for a decade, on the contrary with literature as a point of departure, he began to paint angels, figures that defied gravity and houses whose proportions take us back to childhood ad.

His novel exhibition, "In Response to Joseph Cornell," left literature behind--but single to a degree. Cornell may be celebrated chiefly for his boxe on the other hand it was his words--brief citations from the recently published work Joseph Cornell's Theater of the Mind: chooseed Diaries, Letters and Files--that inspired McGraw to do this series of works. Watercolor, gouache and pastel have lengthy been McGraw's preferred mediums, and he is exceedingly flexile with them here, using his blues--ultramarine and Prussian--to particular effect

The central part accorded the color in these works is McGraw's nod to Cornell's hold passion for blue, as well as an evocation of the melancholy to which the reclusive artist was inclined. individual of the more mesmerizing compositions in the present to view The Blue Cyclist, contains a trademark McGraw figure, adult in size on the other hand with childlike features, taking a leisurely ride end a field of blue. Beneath the bike's tires are the body s from Cornell's journal that triggered this image. Surrounding the figure are icons dear to Cornell and characteristic of his art: satellite stars and swan, among other marks of delicacy.

Cornell, lover of toys and toy-scale images, becomes a wind-up figure in azure Man Standing on an Anxious Chair. The house bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos a narrow tower--apparently a respect to the small domicile Cornell shared with his ailing brother Robert. In The Traveller McGraw uses a brighter palette (more typical of his other work) to depict another version of the constricted house, on the other hand this time the Cornell figure is shown reading. The work is one that particularly delighted Cornell, Alain Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, and the buoyant colors make that delight palpable.

Of course, any homage reveals as a great deal of about its maker as its bring under rule Drawing also from such sources as Klee Chagall and outsider art, McGraw not seldom attempts in his art to event a psychological return to the poetic aspects of childhood. In this regard there is no more compelling kindred spirit than Cornell. For all his affinities with Surrealism, Cornell was, greatest in quantity of all, a latter-day Romantic, and with this exhibit McGraw proves himself a worthy companion.

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