Parker County Today August 2015 | Page 50

our art: TUCKER MCGEE BY MEL W RHODES Tucker McGee talks about his art, faith and the “painful pleasure” of playing the violin AUGUST 2015 PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY Tucker and Elizabeth McGee Over half a century ago, circa 1960, a 10-year-old boy born in Littlefield, Texas, found himself in possession of an 8 1/2x11-inch piece of black cotton duck and decided to paint a sailboat on it. He still has that first effort on a shelf. But the artist did not emerge overnight; he didn’t really turn a serious eye to art until 1976 when he revisited it with a clearer sense of what he wanted to do. “I doodled over the years, you know, drawings and things like that — then came high school and sports and girls and cars … ” Tucker McGee said with a chuckle. And life simply has a way of imposing certain responsibilities upon you, of shuffling priorities. “I never really completely got away from it,“ McGee said. “I started to do more detailed pencil drawings, and things just kind of coalesced into what I do now. It was intriguing to me, and it was 48 Rodeo Clown