If you've never been to the City Gallery at Waterfront Park in downtown Charleston, now's a good time to do it.

It's a great, fancy building on the water with vistas and plenty of white-walled, wide open space. And at the moment, it's full of intriguing art by the accomplished artist William McCullough.

I admire anyone who puts their life's work up for public examination, and that's what this show's all about. You can trace McCullough's career, from childhood daubs to recent commissions, and his lifelong passion as well.

Here's what I had to say about the show in a recent issue of the Charleston City Paper:


Why would anyone bother with realist paintings of the cracked, down-at-heel sidewalks of Cannon or Line streets? They're not areas that tourists will recognize. Telephone poles and parked cars obscure any view that could be described as picturesque. Worst of all, those streets are just so damn ordinary.

But what if some of the telephone wires dissipated into the sky, leaving more room for the shimmering sunlight to peep through? What if the dark greens of the trees and houses were accentuated? What if one man was fascinated with the way shadows played on those sidewalks, and found them worth painting?

The results would be the kind you'll find in William McCullough: Southern Painter, a major retrospective at the City Gallery's Waterfront Park location. McCullough's been busy enough to pack the roomy space with substantial realist art. Not every painting on display is perfect, but imperfection's part of the artist's approach — celebrating the little flaws in life, like the awkwardness of a timid portrait sitter or cracks in a grimy sidewalk.

Putting the show together was a weird experience for the artist's daughter, Currie. "We're using some work from museum collections and private collectors," she says, "and reuniting with these people was like walking down memory lane for me. My father's paintings show the places I grew up, the back door of our old house on Rutledge Avenue ... because he paints the things around him that strike him as visually interesting, the show's a real record of his life."

From the looks of the 120-piece exhibition, the artist has never run out of subjects to paint: landscapes in France, Mexico, New York, and the Carolinas; Southern interiors with rich, humid hues; still-lifes that capture the feel and the form of their objects, rather than being Xerox replications; portraits of family members, acquaintances, and above all, himself.

William McCullough sees the still-lifes and portraiture as a way to keep his hand limber, continuing to hone his skills, though he has nothing to prove after 30 years of professional oil painting. In most cases this would be like a veteran Top Gun brushing up on his kite-flying skills, but McCullough adds something else to his "exercises" — a soupçon of imagination, obvious from his choice and treatment of subject matter and the tangible pleasure that he takes in his work.

You can see a mischievous glint in his eye in "The Self Portrait on Mantle." A mantelpiece shows two figures — one miniature sculpture, one sketch, and one busy artist reflected in a mirror, his engaged, thoughtful face partially obscured by the canvas he's working on. He's kept up the self-portraiture through the decades, so the retrospective dutifully shows his transformation from a fresh-faced art student to a white-bearded workaholic.

McCullough's willingness to show all of his aspects, from his past false starts to his current assurance, make this show a treat. There are a couple of early, pre-trained tries at painting from the early '60s, followed by figurative work from his formal training days with Eric Eisenberger, Daniel Greene, and Robert Brackman in New York.

"You can see how his work was influenced by his teachers," says Currie. By the time he painted "The Young Monk," a 1969 portrait, it's obvious that he had already achieved a high level of technical skill. Now all he needed was to fall in love.

Back home in South Carolina, a dearth of willing models led the artist to concentrate on rural landscapes. Examples like "Stephen's Branch Farm" indicate a tendency to romanticize his surroundings, with softer images and lighter, pastelly hues.

As McCullough progressed, he grew more confident with his palette and strengthened his brushwork (the thick-layered oils of 2004's "Lent," with its gnarly, blasted tree and oil drum, are a good example).

Some subjects haven't changed at all in the past quarter century. 1975's "No Parking" shows a figure on a fractured sidewalk, the shadow of a large building suggesting a looming urban environment beyond the canvas. Fifteen years later in "Westendorff's Store," McCullough's technique has become smoother and more consistent, and he's confident enough to play with the colors of his subject.

By placing an accentuated light brown and white building on a blue background, he creates a world that's less realistic than the '70s version. The lower angle of "Looking Up Cannon" from 2005 accentuates the sidewalk, walls, and gates, but the tone is optimistic; the grass is greener on this side of the millennium.

By showing the highs (McCullough's contemporary Charleston landscapes) and the lows (a few early pieces, some stiff-looking figurative work and patchy portraits like "The Blacksmith") of his life in art, Southern Painter instructs, entertains, and shows what an artist can achieve if he strives to depict the world around him in his own exceptional fashion.

WILLIAM McCULLOUGH: SOUTHERN PAINTER • FREE • On view through Aug. 12. Daily, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. • City Gallery at Waterfront Park, 34 Prioleau St. • 724-7305

Now and again I like to Google my novels, just to make sure that my publisher hasn't sold the rights to a foreign company and forgotten to tell me about the deal (not that my publisher would do such a thing - it's just a routine check for authors to make).

Nice to see that Milk Treading and The Kitty Killer Cult are still out there, doing the rounds on the web... Here are a few proofs of their existence...

Milk Treading's appeared on a fair few people's booklists now, including Roz Gibson's animalbooks where it rubs shoulders with greats like Watership Down and a particular favorite of mine from childhood, The Animals of Farthing Wood.

Diana Coats has read Milk Treading and lets everyone know it on her Bookcrossing page.

Best of all, my Cat City thrillers are getting a couple of mentions on MySpace. More on those appearances as soon as the site's technical staff gets its act together and starts running things more smoothly! Until then, I can't give any info, links or nothin'. Nevertheless, MySpace is growing on me steadily... what's not to like?

The Siege of Charleston documentary is almost complete, and you can see a few screengrabs on flickr (just click on the little box of pictures in the left hand column of this blog - it looks a bit like a tile puzzle).

Also this week, I interviewed Todd Smith, the new Executive Director of the Gibbes Museum of Art. Smith is a golden boy who's just completing his Doctorate in Art History, and knows his corporatespeak to boot. He has big plans for our little local art museum, and I hope they all come to fruition.

With several wee scenes and pick-up shots left on the For Liberty shoot, my producers and I scouted a great location on the Edisto River yesterday. It had everything required for a movie based in the 1780s: breathtaking views, no traffic noise and best of all, no bloody power lines or telephone poles. We don't find places like that every day, you know...

Bloggage has been at a minimum recently because of my preoccupation with The Siege of Charleston, a documentary on last year's 225th Anniversary reenactment of the Revolutionary War siege.

With well over 1200 participants, I came away with a lot of footage and it's been a time-consuming process just picking the best clips for the half hour doc.

With patriots and redcoats swarming past Drayton Hall and Magnolia Plantation, I've been spoiled for choice rushes-wise. But I now have a rough cut to play with, and plan to complete the project over the next week. Then I'll be back to some serious blogging...

Hats off to Linwood Gurley, who shot some cool photos of our For Liberty movie shoot last summer in Camden, SC. They're candid shots taken in between takes of a scene where my character, Charles Burke, enters the bad guys' bar to meet Captain Jenkins - a nasty piece of work as loyalist militia leaders go.

Lin was back with us today, shooting near Orangeburg. As one of Jenkins' men he was kind enough to take a tomahawk in the shoulder without complaint... he faired better than a fellow militiaman, who was hit by a musket ball. It's amazing what actors will put up with when they're filming a feature.

10 years ago I was sunning myself on a beach, writing full time, boozing & carousing with a great bunch of friends. That was the year that I wrapped up a degree course in scriptwriting for film & TV at Bournemouth University, on the south coast of England. Looks nice, doesn't it?

This month some of those friends are gathering for a class of '96 reunion at the Goat & Tricycle Pub in Bournemouth. While I'm unable to go, due to a combination of work commitments and a miserly unwillingness to fork over the plane fare, I've been enjoying the e-mails of the reunion organizer, Peter Hayes. He's done an amazing job of rounding everyone up, tracking down e-mails and bugging people to attend (in the nicest possible way, of course).

Reunions aren't as popular in the UK as they are in the States; this is the first one I've ever been invited to. I'll be keeping tabs on the shebang and hope that it will lead to some renewed friendships.

As well as a chance to reminisce, we'll be able to catch up and compare notes. My family's grown in the past decade - I wonder how many of those footloose '90s scriptwriters are married with children now?

These days, I spend my time sunning myself on the beach, writing when I have to and boozing and carousing, mostly alone in my own living room. The neighbors only complain twice a week, and that's because I don't invite them in.

I'm already looking forward to the 2016 reunion, by which time gas prices will be so high it'll be cheaper to rent my own plane and land it on the roof of the Goat & Tricycle. Then I'll be off to the beach.

Just when I start to feel like a normal, average kind of guy, Milk Treading gets named "quirky book of the week" by Luath Press.

What's so quirky about my first novel? Surely not the gangs of street cats in their bright red bandanas. Or the newspaper printers that spray scents on their pages instead of newsprint. Or the scene of catnip abuse that leads to a bout of drugged-up violence.

Okay, maybe the feline bishop (pictured above), who has a thing against clockwork mice because they're unnatural, is a bit quirky. Hasn't anyone read about a cat in a mitre before?

I always swear that we'll never get any more pets, but two additions to the family arrived last night... our neighbor Dennis (pictured above) had to ditch a couple of goldfish. Rather than flush them down the loo he gave them to us.

My son Sam has named them Chester and Goldie. It would have been Dirty and Trousers, but we don't think Dennis would have approved.

Dennis has requested visitation rights for his fish. He will spend time with them every other weekend, and pop into our place several times a day. (He does that already, so that's no problem).

Our other pet, Tips, does not lick her lips when she sees Chester & Goldie. Instead she runs away. She's the first cat I've met who's scared of goldfish - are they pirhanas in disguise?

Warped

WTF? Tried to to get to the Warped Tour in Ladson, SC this week, only to find that they weren't letting anyone into the grounds after 8.30.

Granted, the tour was primarily for young 'uns (judging by the punters I saw), the 80-odd punk & rock bands had to get to Raleigh, NC the next day and the geriatric Buzzcocks were playing (8.30's way past their bedtime). But the event was advertised as running "through the evening and all night."

What about the poor music lovers who don't get off work till late afternoon? Or, in my case, the guys who work weird hours writing, filming and babysitting?

It's a symptom of a state where the pubs close at 11 and everyone's tucked up in bed by midnight - which at times makes Charleston's idea of "party town" seem modelled on a Chuck E. Cheese birthday bash.

Sometimes it's tough making the transition from Edinburgh (where there various bar opening times overlapped so there was always somewhere to go for a drink, 24 hours a day) to the sleepy South.

It's all for our own good, of course, to stop us over-indulging ourselves. Quite right too. We need a lot of looking after, whether we're Buzzcock-aged or not.