Catherine McCarthy: Gathering Nectar

Boston-based artist Catherine McCarthy creates luscious paintings infused with the sensibility of centuries past. Profoundly personal yet rich with metaphor, her work incorporates references to art history, religion, science, memory, and ideals of femininity. Meaning lies in transitions and connections between isolated passages of landscape, body parts, scribbles of text, and details appropriated from paintings, books, and magazines.

Aspects of femininity—nurturing, sexuality, and the desire to please—are themes interwoven through much of the new work. Painstakingly-rendered images of fruit and flowers, stiletto heels and lipstick, compete with drips and splashes of paint, exposing the inherent artifice of “realism” in painting and of bodily decoration. The exhibition includes large-scale canvases as well as delicate drawings. In addition, smaller paintings which function as finished “studies” for the larger work are included, providing insight into the artist’s mind and the painting process.