David B. Boyce Art Critic The Standard-Times New Bedford, MA July 23, 2002	Bruce McColl's ... pastels and paintings are bold and joyful celebrations of complex composition and high-key color, with an exquisitely controlled economy of line and a gamesman's relish for space and form. [T]hese works revel in the intelligent referencing of art history, particularly the work of Henri Matisse, and the earlier movement of Cubism and its explorations of representation and abstraction, flatness and dimensional space, collage, and real versus illusion. Mr. McColl is unafraid of the beautiful or the decorative, depicting them while exploring and dissecting them as cultural, and especially as artistic, constructs. What's most generous about this work is its complexity, which can be read and interpreted on several levels. But, equally, these paintings and pastels are immediately and ravishingly beautiful, able to be appreciated simultaneously by a wide audience of viewers, from the uninitiated to the connoisseur. The work is both visually and intellectually lush. Mr. McColl is also unashamedly a painter's painter. His confident, varied, controlled, and enthusiastic brushwork and stroking exude a sensual love for the medium. He is a first-rate, almost Warholian colorist, unfazed by jarring combinations of unusually high-key hues, which he tames masterfully with line and form. He uses black descriptively as outline, but also in blocks of form. The four pastels successfully translate the painterly concerns with their own vernacular. Three pencil-on-paper female nudes are tinged with the reminiscence of those by Pop artist Tom Wesselmann, as perhaps sketched with a Johnsian chiaroscuro. A recent canvas titled "Daisy Doily with Yellow" (2002, oil and fabric on linen, 32 x 38) uses the repeating pattern of a crocheted doily to represent the shape and form of a floral bouquet, but the petals of only a single flower are outlined in black; the remainder are implied by their painted dot centers. Other swatches of patterned fabrics are employed as shadow, as descriptors of tone, similar to Lichtenstein's use of Ben-day dots. Mr. McColl's use of collage is assured and effective though somewhat tentative and safe. Intriguing possibilities exist for where he may take it.
Jimmy Leslie, Professor of Art, Monmouth University March, 2001	Matisse once said, "What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue." I always seem to find that armchair in Bruce McColl's work. Tilting tables and bold use of lines invite me into spaces where I am greeted by "Fauve" inspired colors-- and I can imagine, that like myself, viewers of Bruce's interiors will let out a contented sigh, shake their heads in a gesture of agreement, and smile. These are rooms that I want to walk in and objects that I want to touch. I want to shake off my everyday surroundings and step into this world that is sometimes flat and at the same time intriguingly full of depth. It is in the juxtaposition of these spaces that Bruce's strength really shines. These are comfortable pieces in their subject matter but edgy in their contrast of linear and spatial qualities. As a painter myself, I can look at Bruce's images and see an artist who has a firm grounding in the fundamentals of visual art and a thorough knowledge of his predecessors. Bruce deals with the same formal issues that artists have always dealt with and always will-- issues of color, value, line, space, and composition. It is in the way that an artist puts these ingredients together that determines the full merit of his work. Bruce handles these complex issues with great skill and maturity. Take a little time to become familiar with the art of Bruce McColl and you'll find that he has a knack for showing us not what the world is, but what the world could be.

Return to Bruce McColl Home