Central Café, N.Y.C.

Bruce McCombs has a way of turning our ordinary surroundings into spectacular displays and colorful reflections. The artist works from original photographs which he reconstructs to create magnificent new compositions His subjects include urban settings: like NYC and his hometown of Cleveland, architecture, neon signs, planes, trains and vintage automobiles. Bruce McCombs received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and his MFA degree from Tulane University. Most recently, his work has appeared in shows in Norway, Taiwan, Columbia, and the former Yugoslavia, among others. McCombs’s artwork is a part of many important collections including: The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Hanoi, Vietnam. McCombs teaches art at Hope College in Michigan, where he has been part of the faculty since 1969. “From a distance, my paintings often appear to be a rendered depiction of a scene, but upon closer viewing, the parts are revealed as abstract pieces, built one layer upon another into realistic images.” -Bruce McCombs