Balance of work and spirit
Eve McCauley’s paintings invite you to pause. Each one is the result of months of quiet attention, guided less by plan than by presence.
“I allow it to tell me what’s there,” McCauley explains. “I start with gestures and then see what emerges.”
What emerges might be a barn owl in moonlight, a two-headed bear that appeared in her dreams, or — often — a great blue heron in flight.
The heron carries special meaning for McCauley. Years ago, as she drove with self-doubt swirling in her mind, a great blue heron swooped down and flew alongside her car. The moment felt like a message: the bird lived freely, unburdened by judgment, and she could too. Ever since, she has seen birds as messengers.
Now 44 and the mother of two daughters, McCauley has forged her own balance between the practical and the creative.
Her early childhood was difficult until she and her sister were taken in by Chip and Janie Hall, who raised them through high school. At 16, her art caught the attention of Chip Hall’s uncle, a close friend of the president of Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Recognizing her passion and talent, he offered her a presidential scholarship originally intended for his own daughters. For McCauley, it was a life-changing gift: a full ride to an art school she never could have afforded.
After graduating from La Conner High School in 1999, she enrolled at the academy, majoring in advertising design while also studying fine art, color theory, web design, and 3D animation. That degree launched her career as an art director and, later, as the owner of her own marketing firm. Alongside her professional work, she taught herself to paint in oils while raising her children.
“I have a habit of painting my life.”
Eve McCauley
Art was always in her blood. Her father painted with a sumi brush; her mother worked in charcoal and pastels. Their divorce came when McCauley was very young, and she soon began charting her own artistic path, deepening a lifelong connection to the natural world. A practicing spiritualist, she views art as a way to express the interconnectedness of all beings.
The turbulence of today’s culture, she believes, stems from a profound disconnection from nature. To her, it is the “last gasp of a dying way of life. Everything struggles at the end,” she says. “Everything throws out a last burst of energy.” While many feel consumed by the turmoil of the current political climate, McCauley radiates calm optimism, trusting that, in time, we will all be reconnected.
McCauley’s work is steeped in myth, dream, and ritual. Her easel is adorned with cedar as protection; she recalls painting scenes that later unfolded in her life. One such work, “Morning Coffee,” shows a woman quietly sipping coffee by a window — a vision she painted during a troubled marriage. Years later, she finds herself living that very scene on seven acres with her daughters, coffee in hand, watching owlets outside her window.
Another painting, called “Help Me, I’m Heaven Bound,” depicts a heron lifting a nude woman from the water. McCauley had a near-drowning experience as a child and thinks this painting emerged from that experience. “I have a habit of painting my life,” she says.
Her early reputation came from luminous portraits of birds and wildlife in tones echoing the soft Pacific Northwest light. But she is moving beyond simple depiction. “I want to tell the stories behind the animal,” she says. “Not just the physical being. I want to share their wildly free being from a soul level.” Her recent canvases place animals in surreal settings, layered with human figures and personal mythologies. They are not just portraits, but narratives.
Photo by Nancy K. Crowell/La Conner Community News
The shift contrasts with her day job as creative supervisor in marketing and advertising at Grizzly Industrial in Bellingham. She loves her work, which fully leverages her education, but her paintings remain her most personal expression. She speaks of the Great Blue Heron as her totem, the barn owl as her father’s, and the butterfly as her sister’s.
She’s experimenting with new techniques, adding some sumi brush painting, using the tools her dad left her, to her canvases and expanding the color palette she uses. She approaches her art intuitively, letting it unfold in time, without rushing to completion.
Like the heron, McCauley waits patiently, grounded until the moment is right to take flight. Her paintings — rooted in her unique spiritual outlook — seem to soar ahead of her, pulling viewers into their mystery. They sell well, but she is in no hurry to produce. “I’m in a transition,” she says. “I will know when they are done.”
You can see McCauley’s work at Raven’s Cup Coffee Shop & Gallery and at evemccauley.com.
Nancy K. Crowell is a photographer, photo editor, and a general assignment reporter.
