Buck McCain "Prayer to the Healing Spirit" bronze sculpture with accompanying vase for sale at Sculpture Collector

Art critics and writers have often written of McCain and his art. His life and work have been featured in publications from Sunset Magazine and Architectural Digest to Southwest Art and International Fine Art Collector. Here, through the eyes of others, are excerpts from some...

McCain continues to imagine the west in a grand way and to create images that are at once vigorous and dramatic, and achingly beautiful -much like the southwest itself.

What Buck McCain does is translate the dreams and history of the Western sensibility through the powerful and eloquent language of his art. He expresses an appreciation for the color and vitality of the American Impressionists, a love that spills over into his own work.

We have seen Buck' emergence as one of the recognized masters of modern monumental bronzes. McCain seems to possess an instinctive proclivity for mass and texture and balance. In silhouette, his sculptures carry an energy and presence usually reserved for animate beings. The emergence of character, even personality, bespeaks the vitality that the sculptor brings to his work.

Buck McCain wanted to create something great in the desert. And he has, capturing in the grace and strength of the horse, a metaphor for the American West and those visionary personalities that have made it their home. The scale is certainly right: massive, a colossus dwarfing even the immense slabs of stone surrounding it. And like all the best public art, Spirit is site-specific, rising from the floor of the desert, exuding an air of timelessness and permanence, one with the ancient valley and rugged mountains.

His sculptures reflect the nobility of the American Indian in a manner akin to ancient Greek or Roman works. His cowboy bronzes are gritty, yet the detail is meticulous.

McCain painted, using complex and subtle color harmonies to depict cowboy and Native American subjects. People were attracted to his canvases because they were authentic, not belabored recreations of the Old West.

He continually strives to refine his knowledge and understanding of art, and has gained a reputation among fellow artists as the person to go to for advice on art techniques and materials.

While his paintings can be as bold as a sudden rainstorm, they also display a subtlety of color and light. In true western spirit, they capture the inherent beauty of their subjects without the need for embellishment. McCain's art feels strong and true. The viewer knows at once that there is an artist who knows the region intimately and gives it its due - magnificently.

McCain's large bronze "Invocation" represents another dramatic homage to Native spirituality. Whether in sculpture or paint, his images have a satisfying sense of rightness. He invests his subjects with power, making a strong positive statement.

His colorful figures in full regalia vibrate with the excitement of the dance while revealing age-old beauty.

Buck's paintings and sculptures of cowboy life, of Indians, of the mountains, deserts, and people he knew so well have made him one of the Southwest's best-loved living artists. He can capture the immortal, seeing with trained eye the real, the true, and the archetypical in all that he creates. From his monumental sculptures to small intimate studies of the human figure, Buck McCain portrays the essence of his subject in a way that speaks to every viewer in a personal and moving way.