“Multiple Dimensions” by Brian Maughan

May 1st – July 31st
Virtual Reception: May 21st 7-8 pm

Throughout his career, artist Brian Maughan strove to find the essential character and energy of his subjects. The multiple dimensions of those subjects and of the media he used to explore them will fill our virtual gallery from May 1 – 31, 2021. This posthumous show exhibits work from Brian’s personal collection and is wide-ranging, from some of his figurative sculpture in fired ceramic and bronze, to drawings in charcoal, ink, watercolor and pastel.

After high school, Brian Maughan hitchhiked around Europe, and while there he experienced a profound cultural awakening which engendered his lifelong devotion to art. He earned his BFA and MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute, and since that time worked in media as various as welded steel, textiles, ceramic clay, bronze, charcoal, ink, and pastel. Brian’s favorite artistic subjects included Native American and western mythological figures.

His work is primarily sculptural, and for the last 25 years of his career, was mostly done in clay, much of which is cast in bronze. In Brian’s words, “I work in earthenware clay for its tactile qualities, its responsiveness to touch and its ability to capture emotional expression. For me, the goal of figurative sculpture is to imbue the abstract elements, lines, shapes, volumes…with emotional qualities of strength, joy, timidity, bravado…that not only look like the subject but demonstrate its character.”

Nationally known for his larger-than-life-size bronzes, his artistic legacy includes bronze portraits of President Jimmy Carter, Hank Aaron, Bart Starr, and Bob Uecker, as well as many equestrian portraits and sculptures. His three bronzes made during the 2013 Yellow Springs Bronze Symposium stand on a small plaza beside Mills Park Hotel. His last sculpture, a life-size bronze portrait of Wheeling Gaunt, formerly enslaved man and historical figure and philanthropist from Yellow Springs, was commissioned by the Yellow Springs Arts Council, and is being completed by Brian’s son Anthony Maughan.