“Born And Bred In The U.S.A.” Chuck Middlekauff

“Cowboys, at least “Hollywood Cowboys”, have always been my heroes since I was a kid watching them on TV and at the movies on Saturday afternoons and playing cowboys and Indians with my friends. And today after seeing and meeting real-life cowboys up close and personal as an adult traveling around the West with my wife, Carol, they still are.

There’s just something about cowboys. There’s no one like them. They’re all-American icons. 

I think there’s is a little bit of cowboy and cowgirl in all of us. I was a cowboy-wannabe as a kid and now even as an adult. Of course, I would have to settle for being an “Urban Cowboy”. The real Cowboys started life that way. They were born into it and raised in it. They’re the real thing. 

That’s what inspired me to paint, “Born and Bred in the U.S.A.”.

One of my concepts for the past few years has been to make a “painting of a painting in progress.” My art tools tended to accumulate on my “masterpiece” as I worked, and I found this very interesting and appealing, so I started painting them into my paintings. I also noticed that the canvas, and my hands and shirt, got pretty messy from the accidental drips, drops, splats, and smearing of the watercolors or acrylics as I worked. I also liked those. So I added them to my paintings, too.

Anyway, my working methods have produced paintings that incorporate and exaggerate my painting process. And my style has evolved into a mixture of chaos and control…or is it controlled chaos? Whatever!

This playful direction in my work is fun, exciting, entertaining, and visually stimulating to me, and I hope the viewer gets it.

Finally, I try to come up with interesting, clever, and fun titles to tie into the visuals of my paintings. For this one, I considered how I would handle an American Cowboy and a graphic image of an American flag. Working with word associations, I came up with American, U.S.A., born, raised, brought up, etc  “Born and Bred in the U.S.A.” was the perfect solution for this painting. The other option was “Made in the U.S.A.”, but I think “Born and Bred in the U.S.A.” works even better.”   Chuck Middlekauff