Meet Dan McClung:
Dan studied painting and sculpture at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Early he painted commissioned portraits and also won the “Country Gallery Award” for his work in pottery before moving to New York City. His study of art continued and became much richer and deeper in New York with his study of Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by poet and educator Eli Siegel. As a result he has written notably on the lives and work of artists, including Van Gogh, Oldenburg, Lichtenstein and Cristo showing, as only Aesthetic Realism explains it, the important and vitally useful relation of art and life.
He studied pastel, watercolor and drawing with the late, renowned artist, Chaim Koppelman, and later with watercolorist, Marcia Rackow. Always a photo enthusiast, he began to work seriously in the medium in 2000 and started studying in the Critical Inquiry Workshops taught by the late Dorothy Koppelman. Dan has also studied with Native American photographer, LeRoy DeJolie, on location in the Navajo Nation in Arizona, and with photographers Donald Giannatti, Syl Arena, and Robert Herrington. Dan’s work has shown in galleries in New York City, including the Atlantic Gallery, Terrain Gallery and Salmagundi, and at various business and corporate venues. His photograph “Jack Pump and Sunflower” (below) was selected to be part of a permanent installation at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C.
A little more about me…
I love photographing! It all began early with my Kodak Instamatic camera and flash cubes before I moved on to more sophisticated equipment. In high school and college my study centered around painting and sculpture, but I never lost that desire to try to capture unique and memorable images with a camera.
When I bought my first digital camera in 1998 my enthusiasm for photography was reignited and, while I still care for and study painting and drawing, photography became and remains my main form of artistic expression. I’ve been studying and learning eagerly ever since.
When I am inspired to photograph something it is always, I have learned, the opposites of reality in a particular relation, at a particular moment, that have taken me. My study of Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel’s statement that “all beauty is the making one of opposites,” have enabled me—as I frame a subject in the viewfinder deciding what to omit or include, how close to get, or what angle may be best—to be consciously aware of the opposites in what I see; how the relation of nearness and distance are crucial in capturing what I want to show in a landscape, how the mysterious can be shown in an ordinary object, or how light and shadow, captured just right, can reveal emotion in a face.
Through my study of Aesthetic Realism, I continue to learn how to see people, a landscape, and objects, freshly all the time—with more of the meaning, depth and justice they have and deserve to be seen with. And not only as I photograph, but as I encounter them in everyday life.
So, thank you for visiting my site. I hope that some of the images you see here will have you smile, think, imagine, and see new meaning in the world.