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.