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Artist Exhibitions:
"Art in Mind"
The Brick Lane Gallery
196 Brick Lane
London, UK E1 6SA
Private Viewing Wednesday
September 8, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
"Stop Making Sense"
Coursey Gallery
22-23 Prince Street
Christiansted, St. Croix
U.S. Virgin Islands
Opening Reception Friday,
August 13, 6:00 –8...
Further Information
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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:
ABSTRACT PAINTER
TO PRESENT WORK
By Genevieve Ryan
Copyright 2010 Virgin Islands
Daily News
August 13, 2010 -- St. Croix
artist John McCarthy will
present his paintings to the
public over the next teks at
his "Stop Making Sense"
exhibition, beginning this
evening from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
...
Further Information
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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, La Jolla,
California
Severn F. Kellam, Norfolk,
Virginia
Aileen Reid, Los Angeles,
California
Richard Ridgway, St. Croix,
U.S. Virgin Islands
...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Statement for John Mccarthy
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"Chaos for me breeds images." -- Francis Bacon
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 meaningless can playfully co-exist; where reason and the illogical exist side by side; where the details are always superior to the whole; where chaos is the ultimate order, where everything is flatly composed and only the surface exists like a Japanese print; where opposing sides forever reverse, replace each other and merge.
Conversely, the rules of the world can also be seen as reversals, betrayals, plot twists, double identities, traps, time warps, black holes, rebellions in consciousness, metamorphoses and the big bang.
McCarthy's paintings are shards of paint that exhibit chaos theory as much as they evince the work of Jackson Pollock or Sam Francis' later abstract expressionist works as they do an atomic or subatomic explosion of colors, or pixel dots on a TV screen or camera image, where the laws of cause and effect exist in a digital world.
In a world on the brink of nuclear disarmament, an image of "destroyer" art like John's might be out of fashion going into 2010 because we no longer live in a world seized with the fear of a science fiction-like Armageddon of destruction.
The lust for gratification through destroying and being destroyed leads to a stubborn repetition of crash and redux - like a Tsunami wave from Katsushika Hokusai. Chaos overflows and only the foam remains.
But the most fascinating thing about John F. McCarthy as an artist is the way in which he adheres to his absurd logic, while simultaneously presenting the meaning and the meaninglessness of his art. The reason is this baseball-pitcher painter, this graphic trompe l'oeil of lines has the innate ability to recall the great power of art - where the viewer contributes the meaning most significant to oneself.
This kind of art has the power to change the world in an instant - to re-open the old, sacred circuit that exists in all of us - because although art is the ultimate unknown paradigm - when it is done right - it always triggers an immediate, primeval visual response.
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contact artist
