Chuck Middlekauff | On the Road Again

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

This story was featured in the March/April 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art March/April 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

The Beatles, billboards, and bubblegum wrappers: These are a few of Chuck Middlekauff’s favorite things, which he captures in bold colors and designs that lure viewers into a cheerful world of yesteryear. Middlekauff grew up in the 1950s and ’60s watching both cartoons and cowboys on his family’s black-and-white television. The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, and the Road Runner all fed his imagination.

As a youngster, his family often traversed the American landscape, exposing the budding artist to neon signs, drive-in movies, funky motels, and truck-stop diners. Today, the Austin resident treasures the pop-culture heroes and artifacts of his youth, and they all play roles in his body of work. “These things still bring floods of nostalgia from my childhood travel days, and I try to convey those feelings in my paintings,” Middlekauff says. “I am trying to represent the America I knew.”

The mixed-media artist describes his works today as “contemporary realism with a pop-art edge.” He references Andy Warhol as a major influence, but it’s Warhol with a western flavor. Boots, spurs, and cowboy hats make regular appearances. And the cowboys that inhabit Middlekauff’s canvases sip Cokes, eat chili dogs, and crunch on M&M’s rather than Chattanooga Chew.

To many observers, Middlekauff is part of a cadre of like-minded creatives often referred to as “artists of the new West” or “western pop artists.” He names Donna Howell-Sickles, David DeVary, Nelson Boren, and Billy Schenck as some of his other influences—artists who, perhaps, share more in common with Warhol than with Frederic Remington or Charlie Russell.

As this story was going to press, a show of Middlekauff’s works had just closed at Davis & Blevins Gallery in Saint Jo, TX. It featured 28 new paintings by the artist that showcased his latest direction. Cowboys still play starring roles, but portions of Middlekauff’s canvases are now left unfinished, allowing viewers to catch glimpses of his creative process. That’s also why he’s been incorporating images of the tools of his trade—brushes, pencils, and erasers—into these new paintings.

Middlekauff’s signature sense of humor is a common thread throughout his work. He has been known to trick the viewer’s eye by seamlessly collaging three-dimensional objects, such as vinyl records, onto a canvas. Then he’ll depict a trompe l’oeil version of the record nearby. Viewers are intrigued and wonder, “Which one is real?”

Middlekauff also relishes coming up with artwork titles that are full of wit in general and puns in particular. “The titles add yet another level of creativity, so his paintings and ideas seem to expand the longer they are viewed,” says Howell-Sickles, who owns Davis & Blevins Gallery. “His work is moving toward more color, more layers, more details, making it perfect for today’s West. The work is a fresh pop twist on the West.”

In POP GOES THE WEST!, which was part of the recent show, he portrays a cowboy with a Coca-Cola logo in the background. Is the title referring to soda pop or pop art, or both? That’s exactly the question Middlekauff wants you to ask.

Layers of meaning lurk beneath layers of paint in a Middlekauff artwork. The artist often uses a combination of watercolors and acrylics to achieve the effects he desires. He applies pigments at full strength to create the vibrant colors of the pop-art world.

Whether he is working on paper or canvas, Middlekauff employs a variety of techniques to produce the textures he wants. He wipes, brushes, scuffs, scratches, scrapes, and smears the paint. “I even grab a hair dryer to keep paints from bleeding,” he says. And, as a key part of his new direction, he also splatters paint across the artwork, à la abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. “It’s all about the painting process and the random splatters, drips, and marks that happen as I work,” Middlekauff says. “Now I am doing them on purpose. I think of it as a painting in progress, complex enough to give the viewers something new to see at every turn.”

Seeing something new at every turn might well describe his childhood experiences, too. Growing up as an Air Force brat, Middlekauff moved every few years. He recalls staring out the window of the family station wagon at the neon signs, motels, and diners on the way to each of his father’s new duty stations. Born in Turners Falls, MA, in 1948, Middlekauff was 5 when the family began their odyssey with a move to Hawaii for three years. Germany, Texas, and Illinois followed. “I got the wanderlust from those early years,” he says. “It opened my eyes to the ways people live and to scenery along the way.”

As a child he liked to doodle, but becoming an artist wasn’t on his mind back then. In fact, after graduating from high school and without a career in mind, he signed up for the U.S. Navy, shipping out to Iceland and various ports of call aboard the USS Inchon. Life on the road had morphed into life on the high seas. It was during Middlekauff’s Navy stint that he realized how much he enjoyed drawing and working with his hands. After completing his service and returning to his parents’ home in Austin, he enrolled in a local drafting school.

During this time he met and married his wife, Carol. Soon they settled in Denver, where Middlekauff was hired to work as a draftsman. He attended Metropolitan State College (now University), graduating with a degree in fine art, and later took classes at the Art Institute of Colorado. Although he worked as a commercial artist in Denver and Los Angeles for a number of years, he always found time to create his own artworks, too. Eventually, after showing his portfolio to galleries, they began to take notice; in 1988, with representation and shows on his resume, he officially became a full-time fine artist.

Middlekauff has been back in Austin since 2000—the longest he has settled in any one place. He considers it home, or at least a home base. But the road, perhaps, is his true home. He and Carol have crisscrossed America in their various Buicks and Oldsmobiles, logging a million miles or more on adventures over the years. Whether they are cruising for fun—say, along Route 66 in Middlekauff’s red 1975 Corvette Stingray—or taking care of business, they stop along the way to view the country’s natural and man-made wonders. “I take lots of pictures, often doing U-turns to go back to something I see along the road, leaving Carol with a bit of whiplash,” Middlekauff says.

As a home base, Austin is an ideal jumping-off point to small-town rodeos in places like Belton and Giddings. Middlekauff enjoys hanging out behind the scenes, snapping photographs of the cowboys as they sit on fences and lean against pickup trucks. He captures them as they are, painting them with their heads bowed and hats covering their faces. “As I studied images of cowboys, I realized their images come from the way their jeans fit, the dust and crust on their boots, the angle and shape of their hats, and their overall posture,” Middlekauff says. “But beyond that, I focus on what cowboys do when they’re not chasing cows. I include other images, mixing things that didn’t necessarily appear together in real life, but in my mind, they could.”

Step inside the couple’s 750-square-foot apartment, and there’s evidence everywhere of a life on the road. The living area, which doubles as Middlekauff’s studio, boasts a 6-foot-tall, orange Phillips 66 gas pump. Nearby there’s a rusty Coca-Cola sign on the wall. Antique tricycles and an old red wagon are nearby. A screen door bearing an ad proclaiming “Rainbow is Good Bread” hangs on one wall. Wooden crates filled with Coke bottles double as an end table. “It all makes for a great studio,” Middlekauff says. “My playpen.”

There’s nothing on his easel on this particular day. And there usually isn’t, except for cobwebs, a jacket, and jeans, the artist jokes. He works instead on an antique oak drafting table, often accompanied by Beach Boys or Beatles songs. Indeed, visitors to his studio are likely to hear a lot of “blasts from the past.” They may even see Middlekauff dancing around the drafting table as he paints.

The table is useful for another key part of Middlekauff’s creative process: A few years ago, he began experimenting to find a way to avoid putting glass over his mixed-media works. He settled on using a polymer medium to affix the finished works on watercolor paper to a stretched canvas. To fix the colors, he sprays several coats of varnish on the work. To protect the painting, he brushes on another layer of varnish for either a matte or glossy finish. “These are all permanent, water-resistant, flexible, acid-free, non-yellowing, non-cracking, and durable,” Middlekauff says.

Although America today isn’t the same America as it was in his youth, the road still retains the power to inspire him. People today don’t drive for pleasure anymore, Middlekauff says—they want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. But for him, the road constantly beckons. He’s always ready to head out for the next destination, “seeing things that I may never see again,” Middlekauff says, borrowing a lyric from Willie Nelson’s classic tune “On the Road Again.”

“They don’t put up neon signs with cowboys on horseback twirling lassos, or Indians and teepees, or a giant arrow with blinking lights enticing you to stay someplace for a night anymore—but it’s all still fresh in my mind and fresh in my art,” he says. “The vanishing America is what I am capturing. Not for historical documentation, but for the fun it was to live and travel during that era of America. And to remind others of it, too.”

representationDavis & Blevins Gallery, Saint Jo, TX; Victory Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM; Seaside Gallery, Pismo Beach, CA; Rogoway Turquoise Tortoise Gallery, Tubac, AZ; Chuck Middlekauff Studio, Austin, TX.

This story was featured in the March/April 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art March/April 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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