McGraw, DeLoss

Biography

DeLoss McGraw was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1945. He attended East Central State College, Oklahoma; the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles; and the Art Institute of San Miguel del Allende, Mexico. McGraw obtained his bachelor of art from California State University, Long Beach, in 1969 and his master of fine art from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan, in 1971.

Before pursuing a full-time career as an artist, McGraw taught fine art at Northern Kentucky University from 1972-1975 and at the University of San Diego, from 1978-1983. He also served as a guest artist at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1982, the Tamarind Institute, University of New Mexico in 1985, and at the Oklahoma Arts Institute.

Much of McGraw's inspiration comes from poetry and literature, as well as the disciplines of theatre and music. McGraw has been a pioneer in art and poetry collaborative works since the 1980s. Besides his creative responses to writings by Emily Dickinson, Mary Shelley, Franz Kafka, W. B. Yeats, William Blake, and others, McGraw also incorporates the poet's text in the compositions of his paintings, especially in the collaborative works with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W. D. Snodgrass, who he has worked with since 1976. He has worked with a number of contemporary poets, including Robert Phillips, Robert Hass, Daniel Halpern, William Heyen, Thom Ward, Janet Lewis, Barton Thurber, among others.