For more than 20 years, Harold (Hal) Buckner of Water Mill focused on the female figure as the central imagery in his artwork. While he cast in bronze early in his career, a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis led him to work in aluminum, a lighter material.
His sculptures, which were featured in “Figures Transformed,” a 2022 exhibition at the Southampton Arts Center, began with line drawings that were transferred to and cut out of sheets of aluminum. He said he found “all the angles and movement” of the female figure fascinating.
Mr. Buckner died at home in Water Mill on Jan. 26. He was 85.
He was born on Feb. 19, 1938, in Coupeville on Washington State’s Whidbey Island, to Virgil and Jessie Buckner. He was taken with art as a young child, his son Troy Buckner of Southampton said, making his own toys “partly out of creativity and partly out of a quite modest upbringing.”
He went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Seattle and an M.F.A. in 1968 from the University of Washington. He taught painting at the University of Oregon from 1969 to 1971, studied under Larry Rivers in 1971, and subsequently taught at Long Island University and Marywood College in Scranton, Pa., among others. He had a solo exhibition at Guild Hall in 2015.
Mr. Buckner moved to the Southampton area in the mid-1990s, drawn by the region’s appreciation for the arts. In his later years, he traveled in the winters to Captiva Island, Fla., with his partner, Dorothy Lichtenstein. While there he enjoyed making his art, walking the beach with his dogs, and fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
“He and Dorothy would bring the fish to an island neighbor, Robert Rauschenberg, a longtime friend of Ms. Lichtenstein,” Troy Buckner said. Rauschenberg was always “up for a good fish fry.”
While his stint as a catcher playing semipro baseball in Seattle was short, he was passionate about sports. His son said Mr. Buckner liked “Yankee baseball, being a Democrat, modern design, Italy, the perfect Americano, a little Johnnie Walker, a little Johnny Cash, his beloved Bouvier dogs,” and his house and studio, the former Dimon Dairy barns in Water Mill, which he named “Udder Acres.”
In addition to Troy Buckner, he is survived by another son, Kyle Buckner of Issaquah, Wash., a daughter, Leslie Buckner of Seattle, three grandsons, Justin, Ty, and Thomas, and Ms. Lichtenstein.
