Santa Fe Serenade
16" x 12" oil on linen board
Trabuco General Store
12" x 16" oil on linen board
South Bay Sentinel
14" by 11" oil on linen board
Spring Forward
Near Crystal Cove, California
20" x 16" oil on canvas
Colorado Skyline
20" x 16" oil on canvas
Free Falls
16" by 12" oil on canvas
I first began to dabble in Art at the age of eight, drawing figures from the front pages of the New York Daily News. While growing up in Brooklyn, my art teachers encouraged me to pursue a degree in Fine Arts, but more practical considerations prevailed. Instead, after my years as a Queens College student and New York City taxi driver, I packed up my ’74 Chevy Vega and drove to Los Angeles to obtain a master's degree at USC.
About mid-way through my forty-year career in healthcare management, and now married with two daughters, I followed my intuition – a hunch really -- to revive my artwork to something more than what it had become: mere doodles on the margins of my notepads at work. I bought some paints and brushes.
In recent years, I’ve come to appreciate more fully that whatever challenges we face in life, the act of raising a paintbrush to a new blank canvas is a simple affirmation that the creation of beauty is within our reach. My life experience has taught me that it is a privilege to have both the skill and freedom to create any work of art and an honor to have that art on exhibit for others to appreciate.
If you’d like to perhaps purchase an original or giclee, please click on the above menu option for my Etsy account or email me at Jim@JimMcLoughlin.com .
Exhibitions:
March 2024 - August 2024
August 2023 - March 2024
March 2023 - August 2023
August 2022 - March 2023
Community Activities
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Memberships
Julie can speak, but only with her eyes. Our daughter has Rett Syndrome. Ten years after putting away my paints and brushes, and now in retirement, I finally had the spare hours to resume my painting. It was a bit brash of me to start with a painting of Julie, my first serious attempt at portraiture.
When Julie first saw the completed portrait, she looked confused and obviously didn't make the connection that it was an image of herself. But after a couple of days and a few of my attempts of "That's you, Julie!", a look of recognition and a broad smile lit up her face.
Julie sees the painting every day on the stairwell wall as she rides the stairlift to and from her bedroom. "That's you, Julie", I remind her as we pass the painting, and her eyes linger on it for a special moment.
As Rett Syndrome guru, Dr. Alan Percy, so poignantly put it about the girls:
"'The eyes have it'. Her eyes, windows to the soul, take us to cherished places within her heart. Her eyes do more than see us. They touch us. Every human emotion is whispered, sung, shouted by her dancing, sparkling eyes."
Yes, I captured Julie's eyes in my portrait of her.
I can die now, I thought.
No, not really.
It seemed that time stood still as Padraic and I stepped out of the car in front of the iron gate and stood looking at the old house. It had been forty-five years since I had last seen this house, the same length of time since I had seen cousin Padraic himself. It was the family reunion that had brought us together at long last in Leitrim County, Ireland.
They changed the roof, I said. The new owners had replaced the old thatched roof with some kind of corrugated sheet metal. Now the old house had the look of abandonment.
"Can we go up and take a look"?
"I don’t see why not", said Padraic. "Doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Ah sure, noone would mind anyway".
And so the two of us strode up the lane, our shoes squishing in the soggy grass – dress shoes they were as we had just come from Uncle John’s funeral. A flood of memories cast its spell. This was the childhood home of Padraic’s mom and mine. A family of ten lived in that house – three rooms and a fireplace and a few kerosene lamps. This is the farm my mom had taken my two sisters and me to visit when I was four years old so that she could see her father one last time. After leaving Dad at the dock in New York, we had taken a ship, then a train, then a car to get here. We looked around in bewilderment when we finally arrived. To me, a kid accustomed to playing on the sidewalks of the Bronx, the farm looked to be the loneliest place on earth. Almost a full year we had lived in that house, while Dad stayed home to keep his night job at the Tip Top Bakery.
And so, some of my earliest memories are rooted in this farm: warming ourselves by the fireplace, the cow birthing a calf, my grandfather killing a chicken, mom and us kids cleaning out the chicken for our Christmas feast, waiting for the postman to deliver a letter from Dad, wandering alone in the fields. These were the gifts for my formative years.
Padriac walked ahead of me up the lane. I snapped a picture. Right there near the tree was the spot the donkey collapsed, and my 80-year-old grandfather lifted it back up to its feet. He was a crotchety old guy. I once saw him pouring salt into a bloody wound on his hand after a slip of the axe.
"Let’s stop a minute", said Padraic. "Let’s stop and shake hands right here and remember that we are on sacred ground, he said solemnly".
“Ah, you’re killing me, Padraic”, I said, though I shared his sense of reverence, and returned his Irish handshake with a California hug. We were soul brothers now.
That’s Padraic walking up the lane, based on the reference photo I took, though relatives say he's younger and better looking than I depicted. I agree.
My paintbrush restored the old thatched roof.
Inspired by Mr. Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan
Excerpt of Lyrics:
And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Hey, Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey, Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I'll come following you.
~ Bob Dylan
Walking on the beach in Dana Point, CA, I saw this young boy splashing along the shore in his street clothes. I then saw the lady sitting back on the sand, watching him. I introduced myself, and she gave me permission to snap a couple of photos of her son for my next painting. My camera caught him in a moment of reverie, and it became the reference for this painting. Pure spontaneity — his shoes soaking wet.
Jim McLoughlin Art
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