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Artist Statement:
JFM Theory: Chaos is the
ultimate order.
The energy embodied in
John McCarthy's triptychs
especially spring from a chaos
that exists at a level that
far surpasses the categories
of abstract expressionism and
other forms of so-called
"accidental art."
It is a place where the
meaningful and the...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
September 5 – October 11, 2008
Opening Reception Friday,
September 5, 5:30 –8:30 pm
Important and Collectable
Original Art Group Show
The Aldo Castillo Gallery
presents a new artists
exhibition featuring 40 new
and established artists.
Guidelines:
1)Theme: Artwork should appeal
to collectors therefore should
be: Abstract, rural ...
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Artist Galleries:
Vast Imagery Gallery
(Not Exclusive)
Gallows Bay Marketplace
5027 Anchor Way, Suites 1-13
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
00820-4671...
Further Information
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Artist Reviews:
ST. CROIX PAINTER TO SHOWCASE
HIS WORK IN CHICAGO MUSEUM
By Ayesha Morris
Copyright 2008 Virgin Islands
Daily News
Sept. 5, 2008 -- Flinging
tubes of paint against canvas
is John McCarthy’s signature.
The resulting streaks, created
from drips or strings of
Utrecht oil colors, are his
abstract imaginings.
“It’...
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Collections:
Louise Stapleton, San Diego,
California
Tom Michael, Troy, Michigan
Vast Imagery Galleries, St.
Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
Todd Cherry, Livonia, Michigan
Shawn M. Izenson, Alexandria,
Virginia
Larry Williams, Sydney,
Australia
Severn Kellam, Norfolk,
Virginia
Millard Davis, Norfolk,
Virginia
Aileen Reid, Los Angeles,
California
Holliday Jarvis, La Romana,
Dominican Republic...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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John Mccarthy Biography:
| Biographical information for John Mccarthy can be found below. The artist may choose what information to display. Sometimes the artist chooses not to display personal information to the general public. |
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Age
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45
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| Gender |
Male
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| Status |
Single
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| Children |
1
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| Religion |
Roman Catholic |
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| Education |
Undergraduate Degree |
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| Hobbies / Interests |
History of Art, tennis, hiking |
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| Favorite Artistic Medium |
Painting Oil
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| Favorite Arthistory Movement |
Neo-Expressionism - (1970 - 1990)
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| Favorite Visual Artist |
Gerhard Richter
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| Favorite Work of Art |
Im Wald by Georg Baselitz
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| Biggest Artistic Inspiration |
Mortality.
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| Why Did You Become An Artist |
"All art is a revolt against man's fate."
--Andre Malraux |
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| Your Personal Biography |
“I do not deny the accident -- serendipity exists.” So says John F. McCarthy riffing on the famous quote by Jackson Pollack that Robert Motherwell spoon-fed “Jack The Dripper” for an infamous 1950s radio interview. “JFM” believes like Motherwell that the form of a work of art should dictate the idea rather than vice versa. As a painter, he is influenced by Pollack, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Joan Miro and Jean Dubuffet. But the painters he'd most like to paint like are the Neo-Expressionist German artists Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Wolfgang Stiller and Gerhard Merz -- the painting 'Iraq' has been compared to German artist Anselm Kiefer because he mixed St. Croix beach sand into the painting - Kiefer has used plain dirt. Like Baselitz, McCarthy's art is about 'deformation, the power of subject and the vibrancy of the colors.' However the closest influence people see is that of Sam Francis (1923-1994) when Sam began painting in a Pollock-esque style because the San Francisco artist was angry about being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Sam Francis was a plane crash survivor just as McCarthy is. Stylistically, his more recent work (2009) is harder to pin down: there are those who see the Richter influence in an 'accidental' painting like 'Bat in a Blue Storm' but the paintings 'Tsunami Icarus,' 'Bowels of Rust' (a Jean Michel Basquiat phrase) and 'Happy Day' are harder to reference. According to the gallery that sponsored his group show in 2008, an offhand local Chicago TV reporter's remark that: 'Wallpaper in its embryonic stage is more finished' than a McCarthy painting led to a run on his works displayed at the Aldo Castillo Contemporary - he was the only artist of the 40 'emerging' artists participating in 'The Art of Buying Collectible Art' to sell all of his works. Some see the influence of uber-teacher Hans Hoffman's 'Fear' (1946) in a work like 'Uncrackable Egg' (2008) which was changed drastically when the artist added his initials rapper-style and bigger than life in the center of the painting - a powerful commentary on the cult of personality in establishing dollar values of 'Art' - (if a painting is not signed on the front by a 'name' artist, then the art auction galleries like Christie's and Sotheby's statistically realize lower sales prices at auction). McCarthy's technique, the way the lines of paint connect or don't connect in his triptychs and diptychs harken back to Ellsworth Kelly and his constructivist works of the 1960s. Hence his 'accidents are what Kelly would come to call 'serendipity' in his own art. When it comes to Americans currently painting, perhaps the most telling comment made about McCarthy's art in print was when it was dubbed a 'non-figurative' Barnaby Furnas. Like Furnas' works, McCarthy's paintings portray an explosion of paint - not unlike Furnas' 'The Duel.' And speaking of American influences in this artist's works - who does not see the influence of American Morris Louise's 'Beth Aleph' from 1960 in the oil painting version called: 'Camus' Death' of 2008? Or see Philip Guston's 'Head and Bottle' in works like 'Damien Hirst' and 'Van Gogh in Japan?' In typically American fashion though (his art has been criticized as being “fast” like fast food) McCarthy has described his signature “automatic” painting technique as utilizing a baseball-style side-arm throwing motion of the oil paint directly from the tube onto the canvas. The “throws” certainly cause dramatic, even expressive splotches of color on Gessoed fabric, but one critic was skeptical, saying: 'Wallpaper in it's embryonic stage is more finished.' Still, with a vast knowledge and reverence for the History of Art McCarthy is undeterred. He was greatly influenced by the automatic drawings of Max Ernst and Pollack that were regularly on display in the campus museum in Ann Arbor. McCarthy’s university curriculum was geared towards writing, but he never stopped making charcoal drawings and painting – preferring to try to imitate on his own time the great artists that he had come to meet in the History of Art classes that he so relished. After graduating in 1986 Bachelor of Art degrees in English and Philosophy in 1986, the young artist moved to where all young American artists move – New York City – so he could view the art he had only seen projected onto movie screens in college – now up close and personal where the majority of it was displayed. Never wanting to do what was easiest, despite being hired into the art department of one of the most prestigious advertising agencies in New York, McCarthy dreamed up sample advertising campaigns and drew storyboards – not to continue on in the art department where he was greenlighted within one day for promotion – but in order to try to work as a copywriter – ever present in his mind was his goal of being the next great American writer. But the impersonal nature of the gray city, the deafening noise of the daily subway commute and the sticky black soot he’s have to wash from his face every evening soon convinced this sensitive artist that the bright lights and big city of the Big Apple weren’t for him – the city’s skyscrapers, he thought – were dehumanizing in their scale. Like French painter Paul Gauguin 100 years before him and his favorite writer Herman Melville, John longed for an adventurous island lifestyle with plenty of clean air, available women and excitement in the sun and sea. His wish was granted when he applied for and received a job offer as a newspaper reporter first in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands – and then in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Although he had worked as a newspaper reporter briefly in Ann Arbor, the now professional writer quickly grew bored doing Halloween stories on the dangers of pumpkin carving – he wanted the crime beat – so that he’d be writing stories he could sink his curious teeth into. While establishing himself as the territory’s best writer and reporter, John continued to paint. In the early 1990s he developed his wind-assisted “Wind Scribbles” style where he allowed the natural action of the wind to convey the paint onto his canvasses – he still wanted to create an action painting style like Pollack’s – but he was finding it difficult to achieve on the small canvasses he could afford to buy on a reporter’s salary – and using the classical masters oil paint he favored. Over the next 10 years or so, McCarthy’s action painting would evolve, by first discarding the easel and second placing the canvasses flat on waist-high wooden sawhorses. This time instead of letting the paint dribble out of the tube to be blown onto the canvas by the wind – John took a more active role in delivering the oil to fabric. Whereas Pollack had lain the canvas flat on the ground, crouching like a baseball catcher to crap-shoot the industrial paint onto the canvas from a wooden stick – McCarthy found he was more comfortable standing up, especially since an old knee injury to his left leg made it difficult for him to crouch over the canvas – plus, when had played baseball – he was always a pitcher, never the catcher. The violent throwing motion produced unintended effects on his paintings that he welcomed, such as one wet color carrying an earlier applied color further onto the canvas due to the force and trajectory of the paint as it was “applied” to the canvas. Early paintings such as “Venus Fly Trap,” “Syringe Effect: Death Throes” (a play on words) and “Raspberry Swing” were created in this manner. But the new style still left much paint off the canvas and the majority of it in the fields and woods where he could paint with total abandon and freedom – it seemed to him that every leaf on every tree an every blade of grass -- but not the actual canvas itself – was being painted! Over time, the concept of laying three canvasses side by side (as in the recent Triptych Series), so that the majority of paint thrown would not only be “collected” on the canvas, but also so that the “line” of color could be followed from one individual canvas, to the second one, to the third one – an artistic storyline with a beginning, middle and end just like a novel! Though raised a Roman Catholic in a typically Irish-American household to working class parents, McCarthy is now a practicing Buddhist who believes his frenzied, frantic “brushstrokes” have a Zen-like connection to the stresses of modern day life and despite such a volcanic, violent birth – when dry result in finished images of power and eruption that magically have a sort of calming, balm-like effect – like the tropical weather in which they were created. Make no mistake, this are purposefully minimalistic works -- don't let the bright colors fool you. If you look at his arguably most controversial work 'Iraq' there is even an Anselm Kiefer-like quality to the background colors (mixed with St. Croix beach sand) that these blue, gray, green and red army men are sunken into like quicksand. Giclee posters of McCarthy’s work are available for $500-$600 exclusively through Ambrosiart of Van Nuys, California. For more information go to John’s website at: johnmccarthy@30art.com or contact Kristina Hope at (818) 905-5759 or (818) 389-7838 'Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.' --Frank Zappa
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