Watch Your Rear, 1987

Private Collection, Toronto

Kinsman Robinson Galleries, William McElcheran: Humanism in Bronze, exhibition catalogue, Toronto, 2010, pages 2-6

The artist’s quintessential portly businessman sculptures are among the most sought-after works by the artist. Inspired by his growing corporate-working clientele, the artist often titled his sculptures with tongue-in-cheek colloquialisms as evidenced in “Watch Your Rear”. A play on words, the title references the cut-throat mentality of the shrewd businessman, always watching his back and protecting himself from competition. The figure simultaneously looks back in a self-protective manoeuvre while continuing his forward trajectory through his dynamic wide stride and swinging briefcase, mirroring the necessary head-strong perseverance of the business world. In the artist's self-penned poem “Endangered Species”, McElcheran explores humanism and is particularly poignant to his businessmen sculptural series. He wrote: “Eyes shifting, watching for movement, nose sniffing for traces, Ears attentive for sounds above or below the buzz of the city, watching, smelling, listening, prey and predator. Calculating, (no time for contemplation), basking, bronzing at appointed times — but reachable. Aiming to more than survive, fracturing infinitives and anything else that impedes or endangers. Non-hero, non-poet, non-philosopher, endangering and endangered — in our millions.” This work comes from a non-posthumous series with the work itself being a posthumous casting, undertaken by the estate of the artist.