Daniel Mccoy: We Can Only Go Up From Here

From dawn till dusk, the landscapes of Northern New Mexico can change drastically, shifting with the play of sunlight and cloud shadows to offer different color palettes every hour. Muscogee Creek/Citizen Band Potawatomi artist Daniel McCoy is closely attuned to these changes — under his brush, even the land formations around his home are new each day. McCoy is typically known for his distinctive, high-energy style, blending elements of pop art, cartooning, and sign painting to illustrate the landscape and culture of Northern New Mexico, where he now lives and works. While his upcoming show brims with McCoy’s characteristic vibrancy, it also brings something new: a focus on reflection, presence, and inner work. In this body of work, the artist takes a step back from the high-saturation world of cartooning in favor of a realism that demands attention to the present moment. Having stepped away from his position as exhibitions manager at the Poeh Cultural Center and Museum in Pojoaque, New Mexico to focus on family life, the artist now finds himself slowing down and taking the time to appreciate the rhythms of home, land, and sky. McCoy’s studio has become a meditative space, offering an opportunity to turn inwards and practice self-work. The shift in his process has also brought about a foray into cloudscapes, which, for McCoy, encapsulate the theme of reflection. While clouds have previously remained in the background of his paintings, now they take center stage. “There's been a lot of changes in my family here lately, and being in tune with the sunrise and the sunset, what clouds come in during the afternoon and those that are clearing off when I first see the sunrise—it’s all kind of tied together,” McCoy says. This emphasis on cloudscapes represents a shift from conceptual representation to a more realistic style, challenging him to remain present in the ephemeral moment of a cloud formation: “It's moving from kind of the mathematical cartoon cloud that I've always done to actually trying to capture this moisture as it happens,” the artist says.