Renowned artist and former professor Charles McGee came back to Eastern Michigan University on Monday to speak on life, art, his experiences that influenced his artwork and himself. McGee started out early in his presentation speaking to the crowd on what he learned through his different life experiences.
“We are all here for a purpose,” McGee said. “When we work in the service of nature we find ourselves in harmony.”
The people in the crowd who knew him had only high opinions of him and positive things to say about his aura.
McGee then went through about 30 pictures and sculptures speaking to the audience about his life during the time he created each art work, painting a colorful picture in your mind as well as seeing a visual representation of exactly what he was talking about in his pictures.
You could see the transitions in style from picture to picture and as the show went on. Through his artwork the growth in McGee’s life was evident.
“I have now gotten to the point in my life where I see everything in the universe as art. It is just a matter of who organizes it,” McGee said.
His pictures and sculptures have a constant change in medium.
There were many pictures in McGee’s presentation from black-and-white paintings to cut-out art in plastic bags. He is an artist who allows you to feel his past and feelings through his art at the exact moment he made his works.
One picture is of a woman with her head cast over her arm, her body thrown over the ground and her hair laying over her head as if in agony.
Another picture shows single-celled organisms and animals the same size as humans overlapping each other as cohesive beings, dancing together happily and in harmony.
McGee leaves a lot to interpretation but not one thing, his view of the world; the highs and lows, the pains and pleasures and most of all the seen and unseen unison between every creature with every life intertwined together in an epic song that goes on as long as there is existence.
