An image from Jock McDonald's Water, Liquid and Instability show at Gallery 291.
Though he recently moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, after 19 years in the Bay Area, Jock McDonald remains an important part of the San Francisco creative community. He is back in San Francisco this week for the opening of his solo show Water, Liquid and Instability at Gallery 291 on Thursday March 4. Since he is in town for both the opening and a commercial assignment for UCSF, I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about his new work as well as his commercial and fine art career.
MW – I know your work from the commercial portraiture perspective, tell me about the show that’s opening at Gallery 291 this Thursday?
The work I’m about to show is called Water, Clouds and Instability. The show is 12 images. They are 60 x 60 inches framed.
I’m fascinated with the Malecón. It’s the great sea wall that runs 13 or 14 KM and protects the city. Regularly you’ll see thirty-foot waves come crashing over it. I stay at the Hotel Rivera and I always stay in room 1513 with the ocean-front balcony. From that perspective, you can get fabric like images shooting down on the water.
MW – It appears, looking at your work, that your style is different when you go to Cuba, has the island changed your vision?
I am very affected by that place, Cuba. It is the only place I’ve lived for extended periods of time where your material wealth has no impact on your self-esteem. It does not matter. So, when you get invited to someone’s home they share what they have. There is something about that, which is very moving to me. It’s also, for a tiny little country, it’s on the world stage regularly. It gets knocked down by hurricanes two or three times a year and it gets right back up and goes on. I’m not saying it’s a perfect paradise.
MW – When did you first go to Cuba?
After Mexico’s Minister of Culture, Juan Francisco Gonzalez gave me my first retrospective show that travelled in Mexico, he became a kind of mentor. He said you can’t really understand Latin America unless you go to Cuba. So I went to Cuba for the first time in 1992. That was called the special period right after the Soviets pulled all the money out. It was a brutal time for the Cubans. They were starving and there was no work, there was no money. People were literally eating the roots out of the forests, or living on turnips for a week. It was very, very bad.
MW – What inspired this new body of work?
What I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about is that we are involved in this system of water, all of us. The clouds gather the moisture as the come up over the ocean, it rains, we drink the water, and we share it. It was really clear to me one day, when it was raining out I was emotional and I was crying and it became clear to me that the tears running down my face were the ones in the clouds. When we breathe in the air we breathe in the moisture and we are in this grand cycle.
I’ve been searching for 20 years to exemplify our commonality. The things that bind us together, the list is extensive, we breath the same air, drink the same water, we have to eat, love, die. Our differences are pretty miniscule. Language, skin color, religion, maybe geography there are really only three we get into trouble with.
I’ve been looking at art for a long time and exploring it. I think the art world has canonized photography somehow; it’s a legitimate art form. Photography is definitely an expanding field. Everyone can get a digital camera and just do it. You don’t need to know much about F stops or shutter speeds. You get that instant gratification. I think it’s really potent now. There is a side of me that finds that frustrating after learning the craft of photography, I will admit to that. But I think a great image is still a great image is still a great image.
MW – Do you work in film or digital capture?
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