Painter and poet Deloss McGraw has been a pioneer in the art and poetry collaborative movement since the 1980s. McGraw migrated to California from Oklahoma in order to attend Long Beach State University and the Otis Art Institute. In addition, he studied at Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, from which he graduated in 1973 with an MFA.
In 1976, McGraw discovered the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.D. Snodgrass. McGraw sent Snodgrass a series of mixed media paintings that incorporated the poet’s text into their compositions. Snodgrass, in turn, responded with new poems inspired by these images, and thus occurred a melding of media and ideas between the aritsts.
Since then, McGraw has developed a pictorial style in which recognizable forms are morphed by his imagination into objects of poetic fancy. His figuration has been greatly inspired by so-called ‘outsider art,’ most notably by the work of American folk artists that McGraw has collected since his childhood. It is from these that the artist’s paintings have derived their rough-hewn quality.
Deloss McGraw’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the United States and Europe. His pieces have received critical acclaim in over 80 solo exhibitions, and are collected by such eminent institutions as: Oxford, Syracuse, Temple and Cornell Universities, as well as by the Whitney Museum of American Art Library Collection, The Library of Congress, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Two of McGraw’s works belong to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His illustrated version of Alice in Wonderland won the Illustrator’s Society Book of the Year Award for 2002.
1945 Born, Okemah, Oklahoma
1970-71 MFA, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI
1969-71 U.S. Army, Europe
1978-83 University of San Diego, San Diego, CA; Associate Professor
Selected One-Person Exhibitions
2006 Recent Paintings in Response to Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” M.A. Doran Gallery, Tulsa, OK
Recent Paintings in Response to James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2003 Journey of a Young Woman, Recent Paintings, Sculptures and Installation, ACA Galleries, NY, NY
2002 The Circus Loosely; In Response to Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill, Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2000 For Children Only - Alice, William D. Cannon Art Gallery, Carlsbad Art Center, Carlsbad, CA
Recent Paintings by DeLoss McGraw in Response to Custer, Crazy Horse, and the River of Electricity: A Painter’s Response to Poetry, Municipal Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
1998 DeLoss McGraw: As a Poem, So is a Picture, Federick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Malibu, CA
1996 Lovely Dark Summers of My Childhood: Paintings and Piñatas, Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY
Selected Museum Collections
Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, San Francisco, CA
Harvard University, Houghton Collection, Cambridge MA
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Oxford University, Bodleian Collection, Oxford, England
Rochester Municipal Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
Stanford University, Special Collections Library, Palo Alto, CA
Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA
Selected Commissions
2005 Young at Art, Children’s Museum, Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Permanent Exhibit: Alice in Wonderland
2004 Installation and wall treatment, Nova University, Segal Institute, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
2000 Art Text Project, Tamarind Press, Albuquerque Public Library, Albuquerque, NM
1998 Chairs for Four Seasons, Children’s Library, Nashville Public Library, Nashville, TN
1994 The Shakespeare Festival/LA, Los Angeles, CA: Twelfth Night, Set Design
Illustrated Books
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. New York, NY: Harper/Collins, 2001
Lear, Edward. The New Vestments. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995
Wing, Natasha. Hippity Hop, Frog on Top. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994
Andres, Katherine. Fish Story. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1993
Selected Catalogs and Books
Snodgrass and McGraw, A Collaboration. Poetry Press, NY,2005
The Circus Loosely: In Response to Bertold Brecht, Kurt Weill, John Highken, and Others.Oceanside Museum, Oceanside, CA, 2001
For Children Only - Alice. William D. Cannon Gallery, Carlsbad, CA, 2000
As a Poem, So is a Picture. Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Scottsdale, AZ, 1997
Selected Articles
Pincus, Robert L., “DeLoss McGraw at Davis Zapt,” Art in America, October 2003
Imholtz, August A., “DeLoss McGraw, Alice in Wonderland,” The Lewis Carroll Review, London, England, January 2002
Hughes, Robert. “National Poetry Week,” Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2000
Wilson, William, Reading Between the Lines of Literate DeLoss McGraw,” Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1998
“The New Vestments by Edward Lear and Illustrated by DeLoss McGraw,” The New York Times Book Review, May 21, 1995