Finding Beauty in Struggle: The Art and Resilience of Hugo McCloud
Photo by Enrique Leyva.
Hugo McCloud’s artistic journey is a story of resilience, experimentation, and the relentless pursuit of beauty in the most unexpected places. Born in Palo Alto, California, in 1980, McCloud grew up surrounded by creativity. His mother, Irene Forster, was a landscape designer, and his father, James McCloud, a sculptor, though largely absent, managed to make a living through his art. Despite this early exposure to the arts, McCloud’s path was far from conventional. Initially pursuing industrial design rather than fine art, he taught himself his craft, dropping out of Tuskegee University to help with his mother’s interior design business, where he started by creating fountains and eventually moved into furniture design. It wasn’t until his late twenties, after years of experimenting with different materials and techniques, that McCloud fully committed to a career in art.
McCloud’s work is defined by his unique ability to merge industrial materials—such as roofing tar, single-use plastic bags, and metals—into large-scale abstract and figurative works that address social and environmental issues. His art is rooted in his experiences with the rawness of urban life and his travels to developing countries, where he observed the complexities of labor, class, and environmental degradation. His early years as a furniture designer, working with copper, tar paper, and other construction materials, heavily influenced his later work, providing him with an intimate understanding of industrial materials and their transformative potential. In McCloud’s hands, these seemingly mundane and often abject materials are elevated into powerful symbols of human resilience, struggle, and beauty.
A pivotal moment in McCloud’s career came during a trip to India, where he was captivated by the sight of polypropylene plastic sacks that seemed to be everywhere.
These vibrant sacks, used to transport goods, flowed through all layers of society—from bustling factories to the hands of those in the Dharavi slums, who scavenged and recycled them for survival. Watching these bags pass through so many lives left a profound impression on McCloud. He saw more than just a material; he saw the strength and perseverance of the people who worked with them, but also the quiet devastation of an environmental crisis unfolding before his eyes. This experience touched him deeply, sparking a new chapter in his work. McCloud began incorporating these plastic bags into his art, not simply as materials but as symbols of the human struggle. With painstaking care, he collaged them into intricate compositions that explored themes of labor, class, and the destructive impact of human consumption on the planet. For McCloud, these plastic sacks were more than objects—they were stories of resilience, hardship, and the complex web of life they represented.
This method of working with plastic is emblematic of McCloud’s broader approach to art: he is constantly pushing the boundaries of what materials can be used to create beauty. His process is labor-intensive, often requiring thousands of pieces of plastic to create a single work. In doing so, McCloud transforms a material that is often seen as disposable into something precious and meaningful. For him, the act of creating art is deeply connected to the human experience of labor, both physical and emotional. His pieces are as much about the process of making as they are about the final result, with each layer of material representing the layers of meaning and effort embedded in the work.
Come and Go, 2020.
While McCloud’s use of unconventional materials sets him apart in the art world, it is his willingness to engage with his own vulnerabilities that makes his work deeply personal and resonant. He is not simply creating visually striking pieces; he is processing his most complex emotions, translating his personal experiences into a form that allows him to make sense of them. McCloud often talks about art as a therapeutic space—one where he can work through emotions he struggles to fully express. His creative process is as much about self-exploration as it is about making something beautiful or meaningful.
In interviews, McCloud has spoken candidly about how his art is a way of processing his emotions and experiences, particularly his feelings of loss and displacement. The death of his close friend, Netic, in an armed robbery outside McCloud’s home in Tulum, Mexico, in 2022 was a devastating blow that left him grappling with fear and grief. This event not only took a close friend but also displaced McCloud from the place he had called home, forcing him to confront both emotional and physical instability.
In the aftermath, McCloud turned to his art as a way to make sense of his grief. He threw himself into his work, using it to channel the pain and uncertainty he couldn’t fully express. "I needed to find beauty within my own struggle," he said, a sentiment that reflects how his creative process helps him navigate life’s hardships. This vulnerability, combined with his use of raw, industrial materials, makes his work feel deeply personal and authentic, allowing viewers to connect with the emotional weight behind each piece.
McCloud’s work is often a meditation on the tension between beauty and struggle, impermanence and endurance. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his use of flowers as a subject. In his series As for Now, McCloud juxtaposes the ephemeral beauty of flowers with the permanence of the plastic he uses to create them. Flowers, which are delicate and fleeting, are rendered in a material that never biodegrades, creating a dialogue between nature and industrial waste. For McCloud, the flowers represent both a personal and artistic statement. Growing up, he was surrounded by flowers in his mother’s design studio, but there was always a sense that the work of his father’s side of the family—who were artists but not famous—was not “real art.” By painting flowers using industrial materials, McCloud reclaims that heritage, asserting the value of his work and the work of his family.
The theme of labor is another thread that runs throughout McCloud’s work. His Burdened Man series, which depicts manual laborers straining under the weight of their work, is both a literal and metaphorical reflection of McCloud’s own experience as an artist. The figures in these works are often constructed from hundreds of pieces of cut-out plastic, a process that mirrors the physical and emotional labor McCloud pours into his art. He has described how he often feels inadequate, as though the immense effort he puts into creating each piece is necessary to make it valuable. This sense of needing to prove his worth through hard work is something McCloud has carried with him throughout his career, a reflection of his journey from self-taught artist to internationally recognized figure in the art world.
Despite these feelings of inadequacy, McCloud’s accomplishments are significant. His work has been exhibited in some of the most prestigious galleries around the world, including Sean Kelly Gallery in New York and Los Angeles, and he has held solo exhibitions at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and The Arts Club in London. His pieces are part of major museum collections, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C., the Brooklyn Museum, and the Detroit Institute of Arts. These achievements are a testament to McCloud’s talent and his ability to carve out a unique space in the art world, even as he continues to grapple with his own self-doubt.
McCloud’s success, however, has not come without its challenges. As a Black artist, he has often resisted the labels that the art world seeks to impose on him, particularly the expectation that he should define himself through the lens of race. While McCloud acknowledges the influence of Black artists like Mark Bradford, he is adamant that his work speaks for itself, without needing to be confined to any specific narrative. “I don’t want to be defined as a Black artist or an abstract artist,” he has said. “I feel that personally defining any of those things puts me in a category of needing to have a reason to do what I’m doing.” For McCloud, the freedom to create without constraints is essential to his practice, and it is this freedom that has allowed him to continuously evolve as an artist.
In recent years, McCloud has begun to explore new themes in his work, particularly around the ideas of impermanence and legacy.
His most recent works, including those featured in As for Now, focus on the delicate balance between life and death, beauty and decay. These works, which use flowers as a central motif, are a reflection of McCloud’s ongoing interest in the cycles of life and the ways in which we as humans interact with the world around us. By using plastic—a material that will outlast the flowers it represents—McCloud invites viewers to consider the lasting impact of human actions on the environment and the ways in which we assign value to the things we create and consume.
Installation view of Hugo McCloud: As For Now at Sean Kelly
McCloud has also ventured into the world of publishing, with a book that documents his artistic journey and offers readers a deeper understanding of his creative process. The Beauty in the Everyday is special not only because it showcases his work, but because it provides a rare glimpse into the mind of an artist who has always been unafraid to confront his own vulnerabilities. In many ways, the book is a continuation of the themes that run through McCloud’s art—identity, labor, beauty, and the human condition—presented in a format that allows readers to engage with his story on a more intimate level.
Ultimately, Hugo McCloud’s life and work are a testament to the power of art to transform both the artist and the viewer. His journey from industrial design to fine art, from Palo Alto to the world’s most prestigious galleries, is a story of perseverance, reinvention, and the refusal to be confined by labels. McCloud’s work stands as a reminder that beauty can be found in the most unexpected places, and that through art, we can make sense of the world around us—no matter how complex or challenging it may be.
