Elizabeth
McClancy

Bio
Elizabeth McClancy comes late to the field of fine art painting, having spent
much of her early professional life in the theatre and, more recently, as a designer
in social change.  The fact of her having five professional artists in the family -
two nephews and three aunts - might have suggested that she probably also had
some talent in the visual arts, but no such familial proclivities could have
predicted a talent as exceptional as the one she has only lately revealed.

Her recent marriage to a painter who happens to have produced a considerable
body of portraiture over the past 40 years, might suggest that she has received
some serious training, but the opposite is true.  He was shocked at the result when,
in 2005, she first sat down to try her hand at painting.  "Beginner's luck!"
he protested, and challenged her to do it again.  And she did, over and over, with
equal or increasing success. 

Elizabeth, it turns out, is a "phenom."  To this day, instruction has been neither
sought nor offered - denied at first, because her interest was not taken seriously,
and ever after, for fear of undermining her phenomenal natural instincts as a painter.

              Her Preface to the Plates from Democratic Principles:Portraits & Essays appears below.

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THE PAINTINGS       CONTACT___HOME
Preface to the Plates 
By Elizabeth C. McClancy

I was born in 1951, female, WASP and Republican – born Republican, the way you’re born Jewish.

From the day I could pull my highchair up to the table, the talk was politics, and Sam Rayburn was the devil. By time I was married and carrying baby-boys' playpen to Reagan Headquarters to stuff envelopes, that hostility had fixed on Tip O’Neill. The enemy.  Seriously.  I had worked myself into a 30-year-long lather with my demonizing. 

And then Tip O’Neill died, and the 6:30 news played a two-minute clip of him – huge and full of himself in a stuffed chair, talking about America and his love for it and the miraculous processes of democracy.  And I said, “If I had known he loved this country like that, I would not have hated him.”  So I stopped hating him.

Graduate work in Communications would soon teach me why the irrational hatred had taken hold in the first place, why the same thing happens with “born Democrats.” For one thing, the bias of the media is not political or philosophical; it is a bias towards entertainment.  To keep you watching, they dramatize. News as soap opera.  Elections as horse races.  Fights bring ‘em in; reasoned debate sends ‘em clicking. Keep it moving. Sound bites. Images.

For another thing, we live in a time of “overwhelmingness.”  The population is exploding; worth is measured in quantities, not qualities; and we are so deluged with stimuli that most Americans believe simply that “that day is good which is survived – grab some coffee, get through work, have dinner, watch TV, get up and do it again.” We see a story about Darfur and say, “Isn’t that AW-ful…pass the ketchup.” You can’t absorb it all, and really important parts of life and bigger truths slide by.
I didn’t know the truth about Tip O’Neill, because someone has to die for TV to yield the floor and let them say what they have to say for two whole minutes.  So, how do we find a way through to the truth we need in order to make the decisions required of us by these extraordinary and highly complex times?  We must find a way to stop the din, figure out what’s really important, and think it through.

In November of 2005, I painted my first-ever painting. By the third canvas, I knew what I wanted to paint.  By the fifth one, I knew I had a way to stop the din. 

What is so fundamental to the promise of America that it must not be compromised for any person, profit or plan?  Our principles. The degree to which government leaders, candidates and policies adhere to the principles upon which this country was founded is an essential and reliable indicator of what America is in 2008, where she must go and who should lead her.
The purpose of the Democratic Principles Project is to carve out a series of spaces in which to consider many of those fundamental principles. In these spaces we can look into paint for human qualities, qualities of tenacity, intellect and courage that the times demand from our leaders. In these spaces we can study, in context, thoughtful renderings of principles that should define America – principles worth fighting for, worth dying for, worth losing an election to defend. And in these spaces we can talk together, in the moments provided by the book and the exhibitions, about the centrality of those principles to American democracy. In so doing, we can plan for local, regional and national political activism and social evolution.

The essays, most of them speeches in the public domain (with the exception of President Carter’s, who graciously permitted us the use of two recent addresses), appear here as compelling renderings of democratic principles.  Some statements, like Senator Biden’s, are conveyed in bold strokes of conviction. Some, like Senator Feinstein’s, are described with the painstaking detail demanded by thorough examination of complex social issues. And some, like Senator Kennedy’s, resonate with the vibrancy that comes from placing brilliant contrasting colors side by side. 

You won’t find a “definitive source” here.  But what you can discover – or re-discover – in the paintings and declarations and conversations and footage – is real, because it results from a thoughtful interaction between you and the first-hand source you behold.  Start anywhere, but if you were born Republican, as was I, start with the rendering on page 36.

E. C. McClancy