DAN Mc CRARY
"Black Giulia" - watercolour -
"Bling" Watercolour
"H2Oh!" - Watercolour
"Relic" - Watercolour
About Dan McCrary
It was inevitable that Dan McCrary would become an automotive artist. He was born in 1949 in
Raleigh, N.C. By the mid 1950's, his lifelong passion for cars was being fueled by weekly outings to
a local speedway, and on the street the everyday passing of the exuberant designs of the fifties was
adding all that much more fuel to the fire. All his childhood drawings were of cars - no planes,
boats, nothing but cars!
During his teen years, Dan and some of his gearhead friends took up guitars, and this started a par-
allel foray into the life of a musician. Interspersed with college years and two years in the army, this
lasted until Dan was about 30, when the rigors of the road life began to wear thin. It was at this point
that he took up the pursuit of automotive art in a serious way. His work began with a pretty straight-
forward "car portrait" approach, and over the years has evolved into the highly reflective (and some-
times rusty) sections of the automotive subject that he currently emphasizes.
The many years of this single-minded pursuit of automotive fine art have led to awards and places in
quite a few prominent private and corporate collections. In addition his work has been seen in many
publications, including Road & Track Street Rodder, Auto Aficianado, Hemmings Classic Car, and
Automobile Quarterly.
Artist's Statement:
There are endiess artistic explorations to be discovered on, in, and about the automobile. Its sur-
face is a limitless supply of color and contour; compositions to be isolated - painted in a realistic
technique, yet abstract in the way that a section of chrome and pastel can be removed from its larg-
er context and assume an aesthetic all its own. Reflected images of other vehicles o surroundings
can play along the shape of a fender and take on the effects of a "fun-house mirror"
In that uniquely American archive that is the "junk yard" there are explorations of a different kind of
mood; the irony of finding a once-proud luxury car, the pride and joy of days long past now in a state
of decay, has its own magnetism... plus, as an added "bonus"; the contrarian in me loves to stand
on its head the image that polite society holds of an old car as nothing but an "eyesore"
"Hey Della!"
