Art Gallery Prudencia

Clay McGaughy

Watercolor artist Clay McGaughy has lived in San Antonio since 1933, moving here from his birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi. An alumnus of Alamo Heights High School, he attended Trinity University and graduated with a B.S. in Art from Texas University in 1953. Clay served two years in the Army in the Medical Field Service School at Ft. Sam Houston here in San Antonio.

McGaughy displayed artistic talent early on; he studied the work of artists he admired, and took instruction from several of them, all the while developing his own artistic techniques. He quickly began to concentrate on landscapes, country and city scenes, wildlife, and sporting scenes. These themes have become the mainstays of his career as a Texas artist.

McGaughy has long been active in helping advance the stature of Texas watercolorists. He has long been a member of San Antonio's "Watercolor Gang", whose world-wide painting excursions produced travelogue exhibits of France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Alaska, and many U.S. locations. He is also active in the San Antonio Art League, the Society of Animal Artists, and is a past president of the Texas Watercolor Society. He taught summer seminars at the Hill Country Arts Foundation in Ingram, Texas.

His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the U.S., including the Grand Central Gallery and the Crossroads of Sport in New York. His work is in the collection of the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. Clay has done numerous covers and illustrations for magazines and books; the magazines include "Texas Game and Fish", "True West", "Texas Highways", "American Artist", "The Artist's' Magazine", "Progressive Farmer", and "Outdoor Life", and the books include Texas Hill Country and Pecos to Rio Grande, both published by Texas A & M Press.

Clay has been recognized numerous times and in numerous ways for his art. He was the San Antonio Art League's "Artist of the Year" in 1976, and was the featured artist in the January, 1978 issue of "Southwestern Art". He was selected by Ducks Unlimited to be the 2002 Texas Artist of the year. He has exhibited and had shows in galleries in San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Corpus Christi, Sedona, AZ, Santa Fe, NM, and New York. He published "Reflections," a series of prints of wildlife and sporting art.

"Art to me is a simple pleasure. I tire of the obtuse statements of philosophy we so often hear from artists, for to me it is less complicated. There seems to be something instinctive in man that yearns for the aesthetic.

Though the arts seem a less "productive" endeavor to society, this subtle drive has been with us since history was recorded on rocks and buried in the soil. Anthropologists must know the reason, or have theories. I do not know why only that is is so. As we are lulled by Brahms, enraged by Orozco, and provoked by Kubrick, we know that there is depth of communication, an intuitive understanding through the arts and perhaps that is the reason for the arts.

Whatever, I am pleased to simply "let it out" and speak as best I can with my brush, for there is a deep, instinctive pleasure in sharing my concepts with others."

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