Native American Artist

 The tales and legends told to him by his mother and father weave through his paintings as he walks the desert he loves.  Navajo artist John K. McCabe of Yuma, Arizona, feels the presence of the Ancient Ones who have formed the basic fiber of his life.  In many of his paintings, the peace and calm of the desert experience share space with the sadness and pained experience of those who went before him.  The pattern of McCabe's own life, from the horror of Vietnam where he was twice wounded to the calmness gained from desert solitude, emerges on canvas as the peace he finds from his surroundings.  His work is much like the pattern of the lives of those in his paintings; he is a survivalist.

     McCabe's childhood bears memories of being relocated from the Navajo (Dineh) Nation's red rock reservation to the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation in Poston, Arizona, where his family was temporarily housed in  bare wooden structured barracks once used as an internment camp by the Japanese Americans during WWII.  He would fall asleep studying the red wood knots in the walls and ceiling and visualize human faces and figures in them.

     Later John would remember these knots with the saddened faces and visualize the plight and hardships of not only his people before him who were interred on a reservation after the "Long Walk," but also of the sadness of the Japanese Americans interred in these camps.  These memories would later crop up in some of his award-winning work for which he is nationally known.  The tribe's trials can be felt in these paintings.  

     Being chosen in grade school to paint downtown store windows for Halloween was McCabe's first taste of having others enjoy his talent.  In Vietnam, his drawings of soldiers in battle caught the attention of officers who selected his sketches for publication in military magazines and museums.  His father before him who served in the Marine Corp as a "Navajo Code Talker" in WWII, was also a combat artist in his own right, and also had his work collected.

     Upon returning home John utilized his love of the desert and the history of his people flowing through his mind as therapy to find the peace he had lost.  His first major competition show captured Second Overall against 3,000 others at a show in the prestigious Phoenix, Arizona  Heard Museum.

     McCabe's paintings begin as thoughts flowing through his mind which become small pencil sketches on "post-it" paper prior to transferring them to watercolor paper or canvas.  Each is perfect to the last detail.  He will awake from a dream in the middle of the night and quickly draw the dream he perceived, or while driving on the road will pull over and sketch his thoughts lest he forgets the colors and format.  Although he is proficient in all mediums, watercolor is the artist's favorite means of expression.  He likes to be able to put his vision on paper and does not wish to correct what his mind has seen.  

      John is also an accomplished muralist.  His largest mural (20' x 50'), a depiction of Americana in the mining industry, represents ten years of his work for Kaiser Steel in Southern California, where he served as a Junior Mining Engineer and Laboratory Operator.  

     McCabe's work has been shown across this country, from the Turtle Mountain Galleries in New Jersey to the Mills House Gallery in California, and is presently represented by the Old Town Art Gallery in Yuma, Arizona.  His work has been sold to admirers from coast to coast and in Europe.  He has displayed his work and competed in shows nationwide and has also been represented in several traveling art shows and one-man shows, which include:

• The Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

• Hyatt Regency, Phoenix, Arizona

• Hon-Dah House Gallery, Tombstone, Arizona

• Colorado River Indian Tribes Museum, Parker, Arizona

• Old Town Art Gallery, Yuma, Arizona

• Gallup Intertribal Ceremonial Show, Gallup, New Mexico

• Mills House Gallery, Garden Grove, California

• Museum of Man, San Diego, California

• Scripps Institute of Oceanography, San Diego, California

• Fullerton State College, Fullerton, California

• Riverside Museum, Riverside, California

• Red Cloud Indian Art Show, Pine Ridge, South Dakota

• Trail of Tears Art Show, Cherokee, Oklahoma

• Turtle Mountain Galleries, Newark, New Jersey

• The Wallace Collection at the Full House Gallery, Kingston, New Jersey

     At present he has nine different Limited Edition prints of 200 and 500 each, individually  numbered and signed, and he is looking forward to producing more.  He has donated his work to worthy charitable causes such as Rotary International, Children's Foundations, and Prisoners of War and Missing in Action (POWs and MIAs).