Painting the Ethereal: A Conversation with McKay Otto in Wimberley

In this interview, I sit down with McKay Otto, a renowned painter based in Wimberley, Texas, known for his luminous, ethereal works that explore the nature of light and transcendence. During a summer visit to his remote ranch compound, we discussed his career, which spans major U.S. cities and prestigious collections. Our conversation touched on themes from the Tao Te Ching, his relationship with the late minimalist painter Agnes Martin, and how his search for quiet, contemplative environments — like his time spent in Galveston and New Mexico — has deeply influenced his art.

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William Sarradet (WS): You said you are a Taoist, is that right?

McKay Otto (MO): I was a floater, I didn’t know who I was. Agnes Martin put me onto Taoism. It’s 82 lessons. It’s not a religion; I’m not religious. You just show up, it teaches you that nothing is an accident. You’re the sum total of your life experience. If you’re true to yourself, only you can be doing what you’re doing. It is your voice. For me, there’s no way I could be an artist had I not had the great fortune of being given those scholarships at the Glassell. And, you know, six months there and Bill Graham picked me up for a show, and then he had to die. He was such a good, good person.

WS: And when was that?

MO: That was in the early 1990s. In the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. I went to his memorial service which was held in the Rothko Chapel. He gave me such encouragement to keep doing it. And I still hear his voice.

WS: It’s funny you mentioned the Rothko Chapel. Not to be too generalizing, but both the paintings and the space itself almost feel like an inversion of what your paintings are doing.

MO: Agnes [Martin] and I would sit around in solitude and then talk, whatever would come up. She talked about Rothko to me. She said, “I’ve been doing horizontal vertical lines on a two-dimensional plane and I don’t know how to go beyond that. You’re gonna do it.” I made a commitment to her. You know, when you make a commitment and you’re dealing with someone that is one of the purest energies you’ve ever met in your life you don’t forget it and you stay on course. One of the things that I’ve truly honored is to free the two-dimensional. She told me she could not sculpt very well. She didn’t like her sculpture. They weren’t her brightest thing. But she kept telling me I could do both. This could be me saying it, but when you look at a two-dimensional painting, it’s a direct reflection of color. I’m seeking that ethereality. What is ethereal? About the closest thing you’re going to see is the sky. What is the sky? It’s nothing but reflected color. A rainbow, what is it? It’s nothing. It’s about as ethereal as you can get. There’s no material. It escapes. The minute you put an object or something into your work or painting, it gets attached to the material world. The whole thing she was trying to do and Rothko was trying to do was free it to the point that there was no attachment to the material world. My quest, my journey has been to be able to paint the material. Then I realized I couldn’t paint it. I started with my paintings or white paintings. And what you see is reflected color. You can’t paint those colors. They’re just like the sky. Nobody’s really effectively painted the sky. Because it’s reflected. It’s ethereal. 

I had a career early on in the real estate world where a lot of money was being made and passed around, and I was trapped. I was miserable. I found that money doesn’t make very many people happy. It complicates things and I gave up a pretty big career in real estate. I gave everything away, essentially.

WS: You’ve lived and shown in major cities across the U.S. Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Corpus Christi, lots of places in Texas. You’ve been collected. The Max Planck Institute collected work from your first solo painting show at Barbara Davis Gallery. You’ve got a storied career that spans much broader than where we are right now in Wimberley. I’m wondering if your real estate experience and subsequent exodus from that informed you settling down in a place as quiet and open as Wimberly?

MO: I grew up with a father who loved to garden. He had a six-acre yard and I saw him go from owning businesses and being out in the public. In his later years, he was very reclusive. How could I be so lucky to have had the experience I had with Agnes Martin, who inspired so much in me.

She was one of the most reclusive people I’ve met in my lifetime. She would always say, “You’re not gonna be able to do the work you need to do living in a major city because it’s so unfocussing.” You’ve got to be able to be quiet, you’ve got to get really quiet. And my first quietness came in Galveston, Texas. I was living in Houston and I rented a shack down in Galveston and started painting. It’s interesting how that reflective light and color have influenced me more than anything. When you live close to an ocean there’s so much light being reflected. It’s incredible. For 11 years I went to Santa Fe to paint in the summer and then followed it with two years in Taos, and that was when I knew Agnes. The reflection in the mountains, the vastness. I don’t get the vastness here. New Mexico has an incredible vastness and it just does something to your perspective. Your feelings; you feel stuff you just don’t feel in other places and that’s why I go to New Mexico whenever I can. I just got back from there.

WS: New Mexico also has somewhat of a legacy of fostering, collecting, and showing electronic and new media work — work that is heavily rooted in light. That’s why I have gone to New Mexico to see the Currents New Media Festival. I know it’s their state motto but it is a strangely enchanting place.

MO: It is, truly. I promised Agnes that I would never run any electric cords to my work. I use a phosphorescent compound paint that’s made by Golden, the number one acrylic paint company in the world. Anybody can go out and buy it. When I first started using it, I didn’t know how to transcend the material. You look at great art and the material transcends itself. It really does. 

I had a dream in Galveston and she was in it. She asked me where “that funny phosphorescent paint [was].” I had a little left two weeks later and realized I had probably made the world’s first light box painting without an electric cord. You will never find me running an electric cord, or anything like that. I’ll leave it to other artists. Because the minute I put in an electric mechanism, it’s manmade. I’m trying to paint the ethereal, and you can’t paint it, the only way you can do it is reflect it. I can’t do it with electricity. Plus, I made a commitment to Agnes.

WS: Do you spend any time thinking about the electromagnetic spectrum of light that humans can’t see? We only have a narrow band that we can perceive with our eyes.

MO: It’s all around us, and it’s in the reflected light. If you can go beyond the reflected light, you go into other dimensions. One writer in New York wrote that I’d taken her to the 10th dimension. Dan Goddard, over in a critic cover in San Antonio with the Current wrote about that same thing happening. It’s only because I’ve created a multi-dimensional painting. It goes beyond the surface. I invite people to go within that painting and when they go within, they’re going within themselves. You don’t see your soul, do you? Maybe that’s a way for someone to connect with their true self. We get so attached to the material world that we lose ourselves and great art is supposed to transport you to other worlds, other dimensions.

I’m in this cultural exchange show of four artists going to Leipzig with Tanya Patterson as the curator. It’s going to be outside of Berlin, a place called the Villa. I’ve mentioned it to other artists that have been there and they’re like, “Wow, that is a really happening place.” We’re going to spend seven days in Berlin and they’re taking us to Dresden for a day. The Council General in Houston is doing a reception. I think it’s the day I’m flying out so I’ll miss it. This is a big thing, this cultural exchange between cities and I’m really honored to be with some of Texas’s greatest artists like Sherry Owens, Michael Collins, and Sharon Kopriva. 

WS: What will you be showing?

MO: We’re each going to be showing five small pieces. They’ll have a lot of room to breathe because we have to transport them in a suitcase. I’m buying the biggest suitcase I can find. It’ll be interesting.

WS: What advice would you give to emerging artists or early career artists? You have such a robust career and you’ve done and seen so many things. I think that you probably have the perspective that most artists would like to have.

MO: Patience. Trusting yourself. I’ve had some wonderful assistants. They’re showing all over now, New York, L.A. My advice to them was not to get in a hurry, that it takes time to develop your voice. It comes if you’re solid enough. One assistant who is showing with Matt Reeves now, still comes here and helps me. The only way you’ll ever know yourself is to be still. Take on the Tao Te Ching lesson. Still your mind; you’ve got to silence your mind because you’ll never degrade art. If you’re thinking about it.

It’s the truth. Talk to some of the greatest artists and they’ll all tell you that. Mantra: Be still and know I’m God. You listen to that God out there. I’m not religious, but I really think there’s a higher power that works through me. I don’t do the work. I get out of the way. You have to get out of the way. Don’t follow. Why would you copy or follow anybody? You can be inspired. 

About three years ago I realized in my work, I was touching the ethereal and it made all the difference. I had been struggling all these years, working, letting the universe take me in all these different directions within a painting. That one in the living room is about as ethereal of a painting as you’ll ever see in your lifetime. 

Let’s talk about legacies. My daughter was killed when she was 29 years old in a car accident. I didn’t have any of her photos out. And in meditation, she would come to me and she would say “Daddy, why don’t you have any of my photos out?” She was a photographer, a really good photographer. Never talked about it to anybody. She kept telling me “Why don’t you put me in one of your artworks?” She’s on my refrigerator. I see her every day. I was able to bring her from afar. Which a photo won’t do.

It’s amazing how you end up with all this stuff. Because you’re constantly making more art. My issue is I’m really not good at selling art. I could sell real estate. I tell everybody when they come in here, there’s one prerequisite: I don’t care how much money you have. Money doesn’t impress me. It really doesn’t. What impresses me is falling in love with the work and if you don’t someone else will. Every piece goes where it’s supposed to. And you’ve got to live with it. Once I realize it, you’re the caretaker. You’ll never own it. We never own anything. We don’t even own these bodies. When you learn the Tao, it’s just passing through energy. If we’re energy, then we’re light. How we get into the absence of light is when we get into fear, judgment, and jealousy. I even put light in the darkness. I paint with phosphorescent paint that glows in the dark. It glows and then it just gradually goes to nothing. That’s ethereal!

 

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William Sarradet is the Assistant Editor for Glasstire.