ROBERT McCLAY was born December 15, 1932 in Hollywood, California and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He began drawing and painting as a young child, received his first set of oils at age 12, and sold his first paintings at age 14. After graduation from North Hollywood High School in 1950, he entered the U.C. Berkeley School of Journalism on an academic scholarship, with romantic visions of becoming a “trench-coated foreign correspondent, like Ernest Hemingway.” McClay learned he had no aptitude for writing, but had a lot of fun doing make-up and sets for the Theater Department and spending all his free time painting. He had never considered art as a serious career, but in 1952, with his grades and motivation in decline, he dropped out of Journalism and transferred to San Francisco State College. There he took his first art classes, married a fellow art student, and in 1954 they quit school, spent most of the year hitchhiking and hosteling around Europe, then divorced soon after returning home. His trip to Europe in ‘54 was McClay's “epiphany”, because it gave him his first real hope that the artist’s life was within the realm of possibility. 

Growing up in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s, movies had a lasting impact on McClay’s young imagination, and he remained a passionate film lover for life. Artists like Bosch, Bruegel, the Surrealists, the Impressionists, as well as popular illustrators N.C. Wyeth and Maxfeld Parrish, all influenced McClay’s early (1950’s-60’s) work. From 1956 to 1960, he returned to Europe several times with his second wife Lorraine, to travel, live and work. European scenes, both real and imaginary, would populate McClay’s canvases throughout the rest of his career. Back home in San Francisco, the vibrant 1950s Beat culture and Cool Jazz scene provide fertile ground for his rising talent and creative innovation. The influences of Zen philosophy, psychedelia, Hippie esthetics and societal shifts show up in McClay’s work in the 1960s and 70s, as do literary influences like the writings of J.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Joseph Campbell, Carlos Castaneda and Alan Watts. McClay’s vocabulary of symbolic imagery and religious motifs draw from Jungian concepts of the collective unconscious and universal archetypes.

Through experimentation with different collage and painting techniques in the 1970s and 1980s, McClay developed his own unique style often featuring multiple perspectives and a layering of mental images over exterior landscapes. It’s not easily pigeon-holed (abstract, landscape, figure, etc.), but McClay has called it “montage” or “fantastic realism”. As one critic describes, “...a kind of 50s comic book reality laid atop medieval gothic art…a tarot card-like mystery infuses his paintings.”

During his 60-year career as a fine art painter, McClay also worked as illustrator and graphic designer at the San Francisco Chronicle (1955-1965), and as art director, scenic designer and film animator for KQED Television (1967-1975), followed by 40 years as a freelance artist and graphic designer. Clients included AT&T, Levi Strauss, Time-Life, Inc., Genentech, Safeway Stores and Lawrence Livermore Labs.

McClay eventually returned to finish his education at San Francisco State while working at KQED Television, and graduated in 1970 with his B.A. in Fine Arts, becoming the first in his family to do so.

For 10 years following Lorraine’s death in 1994, McClay divided his time between Daly City, CA and his desert cabin near Twentynine Palms, CA, where he showed and sold his fine art paintings in local galleries. From 2005 to 2010 his work was regularly exhibited in civic and public spaces near his home in Daly City and neighboring Pacifica, CA.

McClay’s career ended about two years after the onset of symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Though he struggled to continue doing what he loved, the progressive deterioration of his ability to visualize and retain thoughts eventually became insurmountable. In 2011 he completed his final work, a commissioned portrait, with great difficulty and mental anguish. Memories of his wonderful life as an artist quickly faded away after that; he never painted again. In 2018, McClay returned with his daughter to the Desert near 29 Palms, where he resided peacefully and contently until his death in 2019, from a heart attack. In accordance with his last will and testament, his remains were donated to the University of California, Irvine’s Willed Body Program.