Dan McCleary has long been a favorite artist of mine. My father even owns one of his drawings! His recent exhibition at Craig Krull features a series of paintings that employ masterful painting strategies like the Golden Mean while also imbuing his images with tremendous mystery. Looking at these images one has the sense that McCleary has hope for the human race, while also possessing an acute awareness of our human failings. His figures, though often paired, are deeply alone, engrossed in some private narrative, and it is this isolation that charges these paintings into brilliance, or as Octavio Paz once wrote, “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.”

Dan McCleary
Craig Krull Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave #B-3, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Show runs through January 17, 2015