Canadian artist Donald Ian McCaw, my Artist Career Consultants client, recently opened his first-ever Chelsea solo show at the Anna Kustera Gallery, located at 520 W. 21st St.  This ground-floor gallery happens to be next door to the Gagosian Gallery, the wealthiest gallery in the world, and is in the same building as Maurizio Cattelan’s brand new gallery that will have its grand opening later this month.  What a fantastic location for McCaw to make his art world splash!  His show runs from February 2 – March 3, 2012, and I encourage you to see the exhibit before it closes.

McCaw’s large-scale paintings of “liberated” businessmen are inspired by a life that is far from the beaten path of the typical artist.  He spent the last several decades of his life as an entrepreneur who built a very successful facility logistics business in Toronto that catered to downtown skyscrapers.  In spite of his financial success (or maybe because of it), McCaw experienced a personal crisis in his 40s that prompted him to turn over day-to-day operations of his business to an associate, while retaining control of the enterprise, and turned his all-consuming focus on his art.  This all happened just a few years ago, and the culminating result to date is McCaw’s Chelsea show at Kustera Gallery.

McCaw’s acrylic on wood panel paintings, self-portraits of a sort, consist of men in business attire conducting such non-business activities as leaping in the air, popping pills, and cavorting in their underwear (the tailored designer pants down at their ankles).  Their heads are truncated, leading to an interpretation that they are headless suits that, despite many layers of accomplishment, can’t escape the burden of their urges and endless ambitions.  These are contemporary anti-heroes, created from an amalgam of designer clothing and accessories.  Sartorial vanity becomes a kind of armor.

The timing of McCaw’s debut could not come at a more auspicious time, what with a presidential election year in which the leading candidates are an uber-rich businessman who made his wealth by downsizing corporations, versus a mixed-race Chicago community organizer.  (I must confess an overwhelming desire for the community organizer to prevail, despite the New York gallery scene being propped substantially by the famed “one percent.”)  This business-versus-common-man battle is already tearing at the soul of our nation.  In walks businessman-turned-artist Donald McCaw, who makes his contribution to the conversation through his art.

To arrange your own artist career consult, e-mail me at [email protected].

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Founder and Director
New York GalleryTours