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Jim McLoughlin Art

Jim McLoughlin ArtJim McLoughlin ArtJim McLoughlin Art

Gallery

On Giverny Pond

16" by 20" oil on canvas

Trabuco General Store

12" x 16" oil on linen board

Low Tide, Crystal Cove

20" x 20" oil on canvas

Beach Break

16" x 12" oil on canvas

Constant Sea 

36" x 36" oil on canvas

Colorado Skyline 

20" x 16" oil on canvas

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Group Exhibition: City of Hope, August 2022 - February 2023

    Solo Exhibition: Rancho Santa Margarita Community Center November 2019 - February 2020

      About Me


      There's a line in an old Bob Dylan in an old song that goes 


      … he not busy being born is busy dying.


      That line echoed in my mind as I retired at the end of 2018. I decided then that I would waste no time in unpacking the oil paints and brushes I had put away almost a decade earlier in the face of our growing family needs, needs centered around our younger daughter Julie, afflicted with Rett Syndrome. Well then, I thought, a portrait of Julie in oils would become the first test of my “revival”.


      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 a young student growing up in Brooklyn, my art teachers encouraged me to pursue a degree in Fine Arts, but more practical considerations prevailed -- like how to pay my bills!  Instead, I eventually obtained a graduate degree in health services administration. About mid-way through my forty-year career, 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.


      It’s been said that experience is the best education -- and sometimes the most expensive. 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.  


      Exhibitions:

      • City of Hope, Irvine California,  March 2023 - August 2023
      • City of Hope, Irvine California, August 2022 - March 2023
      • Solo Exhibition, Rancho Santa Margarita Bell Tower Community Center, November 2019 – February 2020
      • Laguna Art-a-Fair, Summer of 2007


      Community Activities

      • Board Member, RSM Cares Foundation. My role is to lead the promotion of the arts in the Rancho Santa Margarita community by engaging and showcasing local artists, from high school students to seniors, at our gallery at the RSM Regional Belltower Community Center.
      • Founder, Art Hub, RSM based.  Follow us on:

                      Instagram@rsm_cares_art_gallery


      Memberships

      • Art Hub -- Rancho Santa Margarita and surrounding communities. Founding member.
      • Saddleback Art League
      • California Art Club -- Associate
      • Oil Painters of America -- Associate


      About "Julie"

      Julie can speak, but only with her eyes.  Our daughter has Rett Syndrome. I finally mustered the courage to paint a portrait of her, my first serious attempt at portraiture.  She sees the painting every day on the stairway wall as she rides the stairlift to and from her bedroom.  "That's you, Julie", I tell her as we pass the painting, and her eyes linger on it for a special moment.

      About "Homestead"

      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 wonder 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 was and is younger and better looking than I depicted.  I agree.  


      My paintbrush restored the old thatched roof.    

      About "To Dance Beneath The Diamond Sky"

      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


      About "Beach Break""

      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.

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