All his life William McLane has been involved with abstract expressionism—be it rocks on a beach, a peeling, painted wall, a landscape, or a collection of random objects. While the realism was obvious, he found himself reducing the images to elemental colors, forms and textures.
Professionally trained as an illustrator and graphic designer and highly successful in his field, McLane chose to re-direct his energies to painting full-time in the mid-nineties, funneling the abstraction he saw around him into his highly personal art. Franz Kline, Jackson Pollack and Mark Rothko were strong influences on his early art in the 60s, and they continue to be.
“Abstract thinking is in all of us. Consider jazz and classical music. The sounds we hear conjure up feelings—beauty, love, anger, turmoil, confrontation, peace, etc. My art is no different than music. The viewer, like the listener, is the interpreter. The multiple layers of paint, the interaction of color and texture, the movement and energy created—they are no different than the layering of notes and the emotions they evoke.”
McLane’s abstract, non-objective paintings reveal an artist whose illustrative and design capabilities expose life through the mirror of the abstract. The result is lush, layered canvases that can be soft and subtly imbued with color or vibrating with conflict and passion. Over a wide range of subjects all that remains constant in a McLane painting is innovation. The numerous awards that McLane has won throughout his career in art continue to validate his work.