Dan McCaw is one of America’s most highly respected Contemporary Impressionists. Raised in the mining town of Butte, MT, McCaw began sketching and drawing at an early age. In 1962, he began his formal art training with a scholarship to the San Francisco Academy of Art in California. Two years later, he was offered a position as an illustrator with a commercial art firm in Los Angeles, CA. The move south proved to be a fortuitous one for McCaw as he became less satisfied with commercial art and longed to pursue a Fine Art career. He continued his artistic pursuits at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, where he fell under the spell of the great European masters, including Joaquin Sorrolla, whose work has had a lasting influence on his ideas about light and design. While his sensitive figural work is deeply rooted in the romantic Impressionist tradition, recent years have seen him moving toward a more individual, Expressionist tradition. McCaw credits Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Gustav Klimt, and the Abstract Expressionists for helping him to develop a heightened awareness in his work, and not to conform to the literal representation of the subject. A skilled and discerning interpreter of color harmonies, light, and mood, the core of McCaw’s work is based on expressing feeling and emotions with the fewest elements possible. He says, “My primary interest lies in going beyond the technique in order to interpret the subject in different ways and expand on the interpretation to make a personal statement. Creativity lies in uncertainty because your solution can be anything!” Nearly three decades after embarking on his artistic journey, McCaw continues his quest for maximum expression, pushing his art into exciting new territory. Today, McCaw is an established painter known for his romantic portrayals of women and children in golden light. For the past decade, he has delved into other subject matter—still lifes, urban scenes, interiors, and scenes from a trip to Paris. The models for many of the figures in his paintings are the people he knows best—his wife, three daughters, and five grandchildren. He believes that the strongest connection is between a mother and her child, and has always been particularly drawn to beach scenes. His approach to his subject matter varies from impressionistic and representational to more abstract. McCaw and his wife, Stacey, live in Los Angeles, CA.