My show's up.

Often, when I finish a series of paintings, I do analog collages. I usually don’t show the two together but I did once when the space was big enough to accommodate both at my first show at The Commons. It was an interesting experiment. The general public responded to the Birds, which sold really well, but the artists and thinkers I knew personally would engage me in serious conversation about the collages. Those pieces were done primarily during the CoVid lockdown but I also did an extended series while I still lived in NYC that were about 9/11 and were shown in Europe and Asia as well as the US. You would probably recognize the two collections as having been done by the same person, although the 9/11 ones were mounted on black backgrounds while the CoVid ones incorporated birds in the imagery. They all have a human figure of some sort, and I try to keep it down to three or four elements. For example, Rendezvous, which I did this week, has three elements if you don’t count the painted wood panel it’s mounted on. The crows are from a Japanese woodcut, the greenery is from a photo I took of a friend’s garden, and I assume the woman is from a European painting, probably 19th century but I can’t identify it. I’ve had her in my stash of images for years now, and I may use her again, who knows? Way back, long before the 9/11 series, there was a group I did with Renaissance madonnas and angels juxtaposed with images from a box of antique postcards I found in, of all places, an abandoned house in Arkansas before I moved to NYC in 1975. That’s a whole other story, but those postcards were all sent to one woman by her son and siblings who all travelled extensively although she apparently didn’t. Some were postmarked as far back as the First World War. I’ve since sold the cards to a collector for a tidy sum after photocopying some of them, but I wish I’d copied more. I love old, obscure images and they were perfect. Writing about this, as I prepare to hang my upcoming show next week, reminds me of a review from The Provincetown Independent newspaper for my exhibition at The Commons where I combined the work. They wrote - “McCarron paints birds in all their decorative, evolutionary splendor, using joyous colors and gilded backgrounds. They’re full of pluck and pomp — the artist’s quietly defiant response to the strain of our pandemic era. McCarron also does collages — a startling adjunct that feels a little Victorian and Alice in Wonderland-ish.” They got it. I loved it. Onward.

After a few weeks of reworking pieces I wasn’t happy with, I did two new paintings in the last eight days. They are very different from each other, and I am really happy with the results. In fact, Cyrus, the bluejay above, ranks at the top of my list of what I consider perfectly executed without being overly realistic or fussy. I have to be in The Zone for that to happen. Relaxed, in total silence, and almost always right after rolling out of bed. Often it’s the middle of the night. No coffee first, no checking the internet, just me in my pjs with a brush in my hand. These two new paintings were done like that, and both of them came with a plan. Not an agenda, just a concept that grew out of a simple drawing of my source material and a palette range I didn’t fiddle around with. Okay, I did a tiny bit of experimenting with the background behind Cyrus but it was always yellow. Not only did he need to sing, I wanted it to pop. The second of the new pieces is Circe, another vulture. I’ve done three of them now with the goal of making them identifiable as the loathsome scavengers that they are, but beautiful if not pretty. The palette changes when I repeat a bird, this time with Circe, named for the sorceress goddess who enchanted Ulysses and turned some of his crew into swine, I wanted it soft and sweet. She sings too, a lullaby of sorts since in some cultures, vultures are sacred. Tibetans practice sky burials where the deceased are offered to them, symbolizing the cyclical nature of life and death. A grizzly affair, yes, but they consider the corpse an empty vessel the soul no longer needs and should be free of. And the birds get to eat. In other news, other than bombs in Iran and Gaza and Ukraine, the heat wave has broken and I am wearing my new glasses. They are not perfect, and they’re as good as they’ll get, which is not as good as what I had before the surgery with my old glasses. Especially close up. But I will adapt. The birds are already bigger than a year ago and will get bigger still. And a year from now, they could be monumental. Godlike. Hanging in a UK gallery. Fingers crossed. Onward.

I’ve been crazy busy this last week and a half getting paintings ready for the show in July. Other than not being able to find my favorite spray varnish, the work has been coming along nicely. Which is good, because on a personal level, I’ve been struggling with my old 9/11 PTSD the whole time. Need I remind you the Birds series began when Trump was inaugurated in 2017? Although painting helps, my sleep is mixed up because of dystopian nightmares, and I don’t want to leave the house. One positive thing that has come out of this is I’ve repainted three pieces I wasn’t happy with. They weren’t bad, they just didn’t sing. One of them, the American Bald Eagle ABE, has been repainted twice. When I posted him on Facebook the other day, someone who I respect said it was devastating. I loved that. Another of the do overs is Gideon, the first painting I did from scratch after the initial cataract surgery. When I wrote about him in December, I mentioned how surprised I was that he wasn’t as angry as I was feeling. Wary, yes, alert, but not nearly as upset as one might expect, given the chaos in my life at the time - my WIFI dying, finding out all the family history I grew up believing was a boatload of blarney, having my eye cut open etc, and of course, the election. What changed this week was his background. He previously had my coppery golden signature color. Coppery gold has a lovely surface. It compliments everything and most importantly, it is safe. Gideon’s’s new pale peachy color might be regarded as even safer, except now he really pops. In fact, ABE also had that coppery background the first time around, and he certainly pops more now on his baby blue, too. The third bird that has been done over bothered me so much, I never even posted about him. I’m still not certain if I’m finished with him yet, so maybe I won’t show you him until I am sure. He plays nicely with a piece I started before my UK trip and completed today, so maybe next time. I do need to report that the post cataract surgery saga continues. As you may recall, I finally got a new prescription for lenses to correct my double vision and seeing close up issues. I had high hopes the new glasses would be ready in time for the UK trip, but of course, they were not. Instead, I went with my old prescription sunglasses that deal with the double vision but interfere with my new distance vision, and several pairs of reading glasses in different strengths - which is what I’ve been doing since November and am still doing today. Because, surprise surprise, when I picked up the new glasses upon my return, they weren’t right. Partly because of a lab error and partly because the prescription was wrong. So back to the lab they went. Fingers crossed, hopefully they will be ready by the end of next week. Or the week after that. Onward.

When I started to write this post, I was at the Newcastle airport for the first leg of my trip home after another two weeks in the UK. It had been a busy visit. We worked on the images for my 'The Birds' book, and got a sweet vintage dresser for my room. We also both got sick with the same bad cough, just like any other couple, and spent much of the time simply hanging out and living together. I baked a few ginger cakes and a loaf of bread, and made pasta puttanesca twice. Speaking of food, we went to South Shields which is across the river from my beloved Tynemouth to check out the dunes and carnival fairground and had lunch at The Marine (https://the-marine.co.uk/) which I highly recommend if you happen to find yourself there. All of this was in the original draft of this post I was writing in the airport, along with how I finished Oskar the owl painting I brought with me to work on and bought the paint I needed once I arrived. Anyway, there I was, sitting in the Newcastle airport writing in my notebook and waiting for the departure board to post my gate. I had a really tight window between arriving in Amsterdam and catching my Boston flight and too much time was passing. Eventually I headed downstairs to wait at the general gate area. By the time the flight details were posted, it was an hour and a half late. The reason being that as my plane’s incoming flight landed in Newcastle, a passenger on it suffered a heart attack and an ambulance needed to be called. The other passengers were not allowed to disembark until the paramedics worked their magic and took the patient away. Once the plane was empty, it had to be cleaned, hence the delay. And then, since almost all of my fellow passengers were going to Amsterdam to catch other flights that we had now missed, the service desk was a mob scene. Luckily, Expedia, who I book flights with, had already lined me up with a new Boston flight, but alas, it was for the following morning. I was given a room and meal vouchers at a hotel nearby and then spent an hour I’ll never get back in Passport Control with several hundred anxious Chinese travelers just to get out of the building. By the time I checked into the hotel, the buffet they provided was slim pickings. I did have a nice shower and slept ok however, and was up at the crack of dawn for a decent breakfast and was on the shuttle back to the airport soon enough. Have you been to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport? It is HUGE and very confusing. But as I was already checked in, all I had to do was get in an enormous line to be scanned by security and then use my remaining meal voucher at Starbucks. So to make a long and tedious story a little bit shorter, 36 hours after I’d left for the Newcastle airport, my Provincetown friend picked me up from the Logan shuttle drop-off in Barnstable, a two hour bus ride, and then after another hour’s drive, delivered me home. These trips seem to be getting harder, although this was still not as bad as that fiasco in Heathrow in February. Perhaps I’ll go less often from now on and stay longer until I move there for good. Onward.

According to Facebook, I posted this as a new painting seven years ago. At the time I was I still deciding on a title when I found out a dear friend from my Ozark hippie days who went by the name Morningstar, had died. We’d lost touch ages ago after she came to visit me in New York. I had taken her to the top of the Empire State building one night under a full moon. It, along with all the Times Square and high-rise lights, blew her mind. I then heard that she had moved to Texas shortly after she returned home. Doing a quick Google search into her death, I learned she had been murdered by her schizophrenic son. He had just been released from the hospital a few days earlier and beat her with a hammer, among other things. In spite of his obvious mental condition, he was discovered cowering naked in the kitchen and covered in her blood, he was tried, convicted and died in prison under suspicious circumstances. A horrible story all around. I felt the need then to name the new crow Morningstar in her memory. Once the original painting sold, it became the image on my best selling giclees and cards. So here’s to Morningstar, the woman, the crow, and her son. Onward.

When I started the bird series, it was in response to the 2016 election. At the time, I’d stopped painting to work on a writing project, so it wasn’t until the inauguration in 2017 that I actually picked up a brush again. The first birds were small and for the most part angry because I thought what is happening now was going to happen then. One would think that the paintings would be even angrier now, and a couple of them are - Abraham, the American Bald Eagle from a few weeks ago, is one. He was a repaint, so was the recent Loon, which also got much darker, but the two newest pieces that were started from scratch, are friendly and light. They even have hopeful names that refer to renewal and the arrival of spring. This surprises me. It’s been a difficult few months, given my on-going post-cataract surgery problems, et cetera. But there they are, Persephone, the Heron who was supposed to be blue but turned out purple, and now the pink Cockatoo, titled Peony, above. I thought about calling her Primavera or Primadonna, and even Peaseblossom, all names I might use later, but Peony won out for reasons that may only be obvious to me. Both of these paintings, besides their heat and palette, are much bigger than what I’m accustomed to, which means bigger brushes and bolder mark-making, so perhaps having to adapt to not being able to see close-up very well now, is a blessing, as they say, in disguise. I did, however, get a new prescription for lenses that should correct all the vision issues at my surgical followup with the eye doctor yesterday. Hopefully I like the new frames I’ve picked out and will finally be able to see what I’m doing again. I’ll prime new panels to paint on today, it would be logical to do another colorful piece, but I feel a Snowy Owl or a pale Egyptian Vulture coming on. Fingers crossed that the new glasses are ready in time for my upcoming visit to the UK. I won’t be taking the laptop this time because of my not so irrational fear of US Customs, but I’ll pass on getting a burner phone and just shut my regular one down when I get on the plane heading home instead. So as my friend Kevin likes to say - Onward.