Paintings

Painting Dan

Dan Mccarthy’s Biography and Exhibitions at Saatchi-gallery

Dan McCarthy was born on 1962 in Honolulu, Hawaii, Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Dan McCarthy’s Black Ball is captivating in its quiet simplicity. Removed from all traces of environment McCarthy’s beach girl is isolated on a fresh white background; a visual device that both heighten her allure and allows the paint itself to suggest a scene. Using oil paint with the effect of watercolor, McCarthy renders his figure in pale blue washes, allowing the subtle fluctuations of hue and intensity to replicate light and water, capturing perfectly a moment of poolside leisure. Through his articulate draughtsman ship, McCarthy’s Black Ball exudes a rarefied elegance, flaunting a sensible formalism to venture a delicate and contemplative moment of beauty.

Dan McCarthy's recent body of paintings puts a new spin on the traditional theme of beach scenes. The paintings are populated with bathers, on the beach or in the water, often under an awe-inspiring sky radiating with sun, moon and sparkling starlit night. The fact that many of the bathers are surfers almost becomes secondary to the immediate sensation of warmth, wonder and the dream-like quality these paintings emanate. The paintings' electric luminosity, jewel-like surface, and depth of color instantly draw the viewer into the artist's imagined world.

Some of McCarthy's paintings depict such seemingly mundane scenes as a nude female bather doing a pirouette on the beach, or a young couple holding hands under a white moon. Others however, display a nearly mythological temperament, such as the naked record collectors sitting in a circle on the beach, or the single female surfer riding a wave under a sky that resembles the dynamic motion of one of Saturn's rings, or the balding surfer showing his spears in silent dialogue to a swordfish as if engaged in a timeless struggle between man and beast, or the band of surfers (closer to Jason and the Argonauts than bathers) returning from the water under a fantastic moon-lit night sky.

McCarthy leaves all naturalism behind; instead, the artist formulates a personal pictorial language of visionary painting reminiscent of the work of Douanier Rousseau and Edward Munch. Visionary in the way in which nature and human interaction are finely balanced, and secondly - and most significantly - a kind of painting that exists through pure visuality and the quality of the painted surface. This is where McCarthy's idea of utopia exists, within the painting, inside the realm of art.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2005

• Anton Kern Gallery, New York

• I Am the Walrus, Cheim & Read, New York

• BFAS, Geneva

• Home for the Holidays, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento

2003

• Anton Kern Gallery, New York

• Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne

• Today's Man, John Connelly Presents, New York

2002

• Circumnavigating A Sea of Shit, Cynthia Broan Gallery, New York

• Group Exhibition, Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne

2001

• Dan McCarthy, Klaus Engelhorn Contemporary Art, Vienna

• I Love NY, Benefit show, Anton Kern Gallery, New York

2000

• Dan McCarthy, Anton Kern Gallery, New York

• The Boys in Bubbles, Mark Flood, Dan McCarthy, Jack Pierson, Anton Kern Gallery, New York

• Dan McCarthy, Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne

1996

• Gramercy International Art Fair, Regen Projects, Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles

• Organized by Jack Pierson

Conclusions:

Dan McCarthy’s Black Ball is captivating in its quiet simplicity. Removed from all traces of environment McCarthy’s beach girl is isolated on a fresh white background; a visual device that both heighten her allure and allows the paint itself to suggest a scene. Using oil paint with the effect of watercolor, McCarthy renders his figure in pale blue washes, allowing the subtle fluctuations of hue and intensity to replicate light and water, capturing perfectly a moment of poolside leisure.

What to Do Next...

If you want any information about Dan McCarthy or looking for his paintings please visit us on http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/dan_mccarthy.htm

About the Author

View Dan McCarthy paintings, biography, solo exhibitions, group exhibitions and resource of Dan McCarthy. View art online at The Saatchi Gallery - London contemporary art gallery. Dan McCarthy

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