There are four new charcoal pieces since my last post, but today I’m presenting #14 to keep it simple. The others can be seen on my website at www.maureenmccarron.com but I think you’ll agree that #14 is more compelling, if not riveting. It’s the mark making, and my growing familiarity with my materials. I’d introduced a creamy pale pastel called Mummy to the mix last week and have been working to keep it distinct by not blending it into the charcoal. I also like to go into a section of black with aggressive erasing, which leaves interesting textures. The Mummy pastel is more for highlights and finicky details. I apply those marks much the way I painted the little wooden panel pieces I did when my 15 year old Facebook friendship with my now fiancé turned into a relationship two and a half years ago. Early into our romance, he told me about a dream he’d had in which he helped me hang a show. The pieces were much too big for me manage by myself and had ornate gilded frames. I was sure I would not be doing large work any time soon, but within several months I’d given up working on the little wooden panels to begin painting works on paper. They were still birds only bigger, not enormous mind you, but definitely not small. As I now unframe those works on paper so I can reuse the frames for the charcoal pieces, I am struck by how lush and intricate they are. They have a sense of wonder and exploration that’s not in the wooden panel paintings which I returned to last fall. This is probably because of my being accustomed to that process, but I’d also had the cataract surgeries and could no longer see the way I used to. They are good paintings, they just didn’t move me like before. However, I am moved now by the charcoal series, especially this new owl. I can see, like in my fiancé’s dream, there may someday be enormous birds in elaborate gold frames. I am currently limited by the size of paper available to me, 18x18” or 22x22," I prefer to work on squares, but I know bigger paper is out there. So, yes, onward.

There are three new charcoal pieces since last week’s post.They are bigger than the previous drawings, and are still being numbered instead of having titles because they’re part of the original series. All three are harpy eagles. I thought about naming them after the harpy bird-sisters in Greek mythology but those names are almost unpronounceable. The image above is #10. I am no longer drawing in preparation for printmaking - I have found my perfect inky black. This a painting, full stop. I framed it immediately as I had older works on paper I could swap out of frames, and it now sit in a place of honor in my apartment. The three new pieces are very different from each other and it would be hard to say which I prefer, but they are some of my best work in a long time. So what will I do next? Another crow perhaps, or a vulture? There are always owls, one can never paint too many owls. Onward.

Monday, I called my cataract surgeon’s office about issues I’ve been coping with lately. Basically, being the good little soldier, I had surrendered to wearing the new glasses I was prescribed there after the second surgery for my double vision in hopes of getting used to them, but it’s not happening. I won’t bore you with my complaints other than to say that while they do more or less correct the double vision I have had for fifteen years, I now have a double vision type halo in my right eye whether I’m wearing the glasses or not. After several phone calls with various people there, I finally spoke to someone who thought they knew what the problem was. Now I have an appointment at the end of the month to see the surgeon again and will probably have to have some laser work done to correct it. In the meantime, I’m still doing the charcoal drawings I mentioned last week. They have taken a step up from being experimental sketches. Not relying on the use of color, the challenge of black on white negative space has been exciting. The trick has been to go bigger. I can’t get the sharp-edged clarity I got in the past with bushes, but the softer lines work well in a large format, and frankly are easier to see. Yes, I wear readers when I’m in the studio, as well as other pairs for books and the computer, all different strengths, but none of them are good for going outside where the double vision is more pronounced or watching TV. That’s what the new glasses are for, but you know, the pesky halo, et cetera. Georgia O’Keeffe took up working with clay when her sight deteriorated, I also keep reminding myself I don’t live in Gaza or Ukraine. And there aren’t bombs going off outside my house. Yet. So yeah, onward.

Interesting, how many views last week’s post has gotten so far. The last time I got this many was in February when I was posting from the UK about our visit to Sunderland where Paul, my fiancé, was born. We also went to London for a few days that trip but I reported on that the following week, and both of those posts had time to accumulate reads while last week’s did it in a matter of days. Yes, yes, I do compete with myself, I believe I mentioned my obsession with my social media following recently, but since last week’s post was about older artwork of mine, I thought I would show you some more, albeit from the early 90’s and very different. Above is an untitled pen and ink piece from a series of drawings based on yods. Yods appear in the Pre-Celtic Breton language as well as the Hebrew alphabet, but my interest came from astrology where it represents an aspect between planets or signs that create a Y shape in one’s chart. They are a rare phenomena called the Finger of God, indicating a karmic mission or fated life purpose, and I have one. I did not know what the pattern meant when I first started doing them, and once I did, I made lots of them. What my karmic mission or fated life purpose is, was, has yet to reveal itself, but I do feel I’ve always been on a path. Or a rollercoaster, frankly, especially when I was younger, but I just try to say Yes when doors open and so far, things work themselves out. So, given that, I’m doing some charcoal drawings these days in preparation for the printmaking I mentioned wanting to do last week. I like them, I’m relearning about working with black and the negative space of the paper surface. I’ll do a few more of them and then switch to pen, or more likely brush, and ink since that’s what the prints I plan to do will involve. Baby steps, it’s all a process, maybe I’ll show you some of these charcoal pieces next week.

I’ve been thinking the last week or two about what to work on next now that the show is over. This is a common reaction by artists after a big push to get ready for the event. In March, I posted about dropping by the Funk and Schuster Printmaking studio and being excited about the prospect of doing some mono-prints. I had just seen a show of small black on white woodcuts in London I found interesting, but the process was too foreign to me. It was only recently that I realized that what I needed to do was some drawing. Drawing was my primary process in college. I did massive ones mounted on canvas and presented them as paintings. There were several professors who indulged and others who dismissed me as a frivolous female. I did take Printmaking as part of my BFA but, really all I wanted to do was draw, which I continued to do throughout my twenties before I finally picked up a brush. Even now while painting the birds, that first drawing stage is often almost too good to cover up, but I do. Saturday, I pulled out an old portfolio from storage. I’ve got more professional pieces from the 80s tucked away in my studio but this was work I hadn’t looked at since I left NYC fifteen years ago. Expecting trash, I was surprised. Most of it is falling apart if not badly faded, but some of it is very strong. The drawing above is part of a panoramic series I did from the roof of the tenement building where I lived in Soho. It led to the brush because I also did sketches of clouds from the roof that became a series which also resembled maps and ribbon agates, and I spent years deep into the theory that agates, maps and clouds, were all the same thing.

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.