Bruce McGrew

BRUCE McGREW
1937 -1999

Bruce McGrew’s education and interest in art developed in Kansas, being born and raised there. These interests were fostered through scholarships to Wichita State University where he graduated with a BFA in painting. After working for a while in Wichita with other artists, forming a studio and gallery, he decided to return to school and was accepted into the University of Minnesota MFA program from which he graduated in 1964.

McGrew moved to Arizona and taught at Arizona State University in Tucson. In addition to his teaching schedule, he also devoted much time to his own studio work in watercolors and lithography, producing a large number of watercolors and lithographs based on forms he was attracted to in the Southwest desert. The shapes and forms he used were often a synthesis of landscape rather than one pictorial view.

His watercolors show brushwork that is loose and he made good use of the white of the paper. His use of tusch gave his lithographs a painterly quality.

His work was widely exhibited. A retrospective of his work was held at the University of Arizona in 2002, and another retrospective celebrated his connection with the Linda Vista Art Colony in Oracle, Arizona, an artists’ community he co-founded with other artists and which continues to thrive and to offer month – long residencies to artists from other locations to focus on producing a body of work and to exhibit it at the end of the residency.

“Mountain Landscape”
22 “x 30″, image size
32″ x 40” framed size
signed, original watercolor
$1200.00