Late again, I’m busy preparing for my UK trip, which is just three weeks away. Paul suggested we do a quick visit to Liverpool while I’m there, and since I’m the one with the Expedia hotel discount credits, I got to decide where we’ll stay. I honed in on the waterfront close to the Tate and found one in the Beatles’ old stomping grounds. Paul is in charge of the train tickets and keeping me entertained. No small task, and it’s a good thing two more bird paintings have sold this week at the Ali Gray Gallery so I’ll have a bit of mad money to spend while I’m away. Speaking of art sales, I’m happy to report that of the twelve paintings I had in last summer’s show where only my giclees sold, I have just one piece left. That odd delay also happened with my first show at The Commons, I only have one of those sixteen birds left now too. Lesson learned, it’s about the time and place, not the work, so there’s hope for the charcoals yet.

Another lesson learned is no work is safe from being repainted until it leaves the studio. Case in point, Peony, who I declared finished last week without feeling the love, then I redid the beak in a pale grey and VOILA, she was done and back in the gallery. I also revised the Crow, below, and retitled it Corvette. It’s now a companion to Savannah, at the top of this post - that’s its midway progression above as it slid into Fauvism, an art movement, which included Matisse, that got its name in 1905 because of the artists’ use of shocking colors. According to Google “Fauvist painters radically detached color from its descriptive function in nature. For example, instead of painting shadows with black or dark brown, a Fauvist might use vibrant purples or deep oranges to create a sense of emotion, rhythm, and visual harmony. Their work prioritized subjective, emotional expression over objective reality.” I totally relate. I’m ready to go all Wild Beast on a new canvas but first I need to do another collage for the workshop I’m running at the gallery before I leave for Newcastle. Only three more weeks to go, Maureen - best get on with the day.

I’ve finally finished, I hope, reworking Peony, the pink cockatoo at the bottom of this post, and have started a 12x12” canvas of a vulture. Peony drove me crazy as I realized, once again, how done I am with wood panels for the time being. Or perhaps, it was the process of reworking a piece altogether. There have been some that were quite successful but in general, a rework takes longer than starting something new, and whatever bothered me in the original version still bothers me in spite of any major changes I make in color or composition. Anyway, I think the cockatoo is done and I can get on with the new vulture.

I love the challenge of a vulture. Getting beyond what they represent and how they look to make them beautiful intrigues me. Some of my strongest pieces have been vultures, even if they don’t necessarily end up looking very vulture-like. Anatomical accuracy is not the point, I’m going for a bird’s integrity and godliness. Which Harlow, the horned owl at the top of this post, has in spades. People love owls and they are fun to paint. I have done a couple dozen of them so far and will continue to create them. One reason is that they look good at every stage. Above is Harlow’s first stage, and below he is halfway through. I could have stopped at either point and it would have worked, but for me, they were both still works in progress while I waited for the owl to come alive.

Enough about that - I have news. I bought tickets for a trip to see Paul in the UK the other day. I’ll be there for the month of August, which for those who live in Provincetown year round, is the best time to get out of here. July sort of sucks too, but by August the locals are moments away from slapping or screaming at any random half naked, oiled up tipsy creature who is expecting, demanding, to be entertained or indulged because, as they will loudly declare, they are on vacation. But somehow August suddenly opened up on my calendar and I get to miss it this year. Yay! In the meantime I have paintings to do for the upcoming show and a workshop to prepare for before I go, so on with the day.

A little late this week, I’ve been reworking a wood panel piece that has taken way too much of my time the last few days. I decided to change the background color. In fact, I changed it a few times, which left the bird all shingatz. That is, I believe, NY Italian for a hot mess. I finally set it aside and started a new 18x18” canvas of an Owl that will be a companion for Cereza, the gorgeous creature above, which I love. Perhaps the problem with the one I was reworking is the surface of a wood panel doesn’t suit how I apply paint now. I started working on wood in the mid-90s when I was painting with egg tempura, which requires a rigid foundation. I often washed acrylic in between layers of the egg tempura as well. Desperado, below, is one of my Archetypal Angels from that period. It was a series to honor my many friends who had died of AIDS, and when 9/11 happened, there were Angels to honor people I knew who’d died then too. I stopped painting the Angels soon after I moved to Cape Cod. Actually, I stopped painting altogether for a few years to do some writing instead. Then Trump got elected the first time and I had to pick up the brush again - hence the Birds.

Also, good news this week. The check for the three paintings that recently sold to my follower on Instagram arrived and I now can afford to buy that elusive UK round trip ticket and I plan to go see Paul in August. In addition, another piece has sold as well so I’ll have a bit of money to spend while I’m there. Next sale, I’m getting new glasses to replace the ones I got after the cataract surgeries that have never been quite right. In the meantime I intend to paint through July so the gallery has new work for the show in August and prepare a few more collages for the workshop I’ll be doing at the gallery then too. Oh, and yesterday, I received the release form contract for a project I’m not ready to discuss yet but when I am, I promise it will be exciting. And finally, I attended a lovely opening ceremony for Province Post, a new housing complex where they have Ruckus and Electra in their permanent collection - here they are in their new home. OK, on with the day - time’s a wastin’.

There are two new birds this week, Pettirosso, the Robin above and Corvus, the Crow below, but I want to write about how I’ve I have slipped into what feels like a natural routine, especially now the sun rises earlier. I usually wake up around 5:30 and hop out of the bed a few minutes later to go straight into the studio. No coffee, no music, no time to think. Just me and whatever piece I’m working on. Perhaps I should explain - a few years ago, after having a workstation in my living room that was easy to keep organized and tidy when the wood panel paintings were quite small, the art space became messy and unmanageable with too many storage boxes and Ikea trolleys taking up valuable real estate in my living space. So I invited two friends over for lunch and we moved my bed out of the bedroom and turned the bedroom into a studio. Once the move was made, it was a relief not to be confronted by the mess when I came through my front door. The bed has moved within the living space a few times more until I settled on the current arrangement, but basically I have a studio apartment with an art studio attached. But I digress, let’s get back to my first thing in the morning routine. After an hour or so in the studio, I finally make coffee. I have a set routine after that as well which includes making my bed and writing in my journal and doing most of the puzzles from the New York Times website. Sometimes I go back into the studio, but generally I bring the piece out into the living room so I can contemplate my next move, or do the thinking I’d jump out of bed to avoid. Eventually I make breakfast, or by that time, brunch and get ready for my daily online hour or two with Paul. It’s only after we sign off for the day that my routine opens up for other things. Sometimes I paint a bit more, sometimes it’s laundry and domestic chores, or writing a Substack or a walk to the beach. Yesterday it was a walk into town for the Sunday crossword puzzles at the library and a visit to the hardware store for the doodads I need for framing. The day before, I got a haircut and today I met Kevin Sessums, who’s in town for a few weeks, for coffee at Joe’s. In the meantime, I have good news. In addition to the two pieces that sold earlier this month, someone who has followed me on Instagram for a couple of years was here on vacation. To make a long story short, I met him at the gallery and he bought three of my paintings. So Yay, I may be able to afford that elusive ticket to the UK this summer after all. Ok, on with the day.

Spent, or feral, are words for how I felt this week. Nothing serious, but I did require a couple days of Advil and horizontal time on the sofa in front of the TV. I managed, however, to paint Domaius, the genus name for Emus, above. He went the way of all the Emus I’ve painted, meaning he started out scary because Emus can be scary, then he got goofy because Emus are definitely goofy, then he went all Dr. Suess before being scary again. It was at that point I began to hate it, which I’ve learned is a sure sign that a piece is almost done. All Domaius needed was softened eyes and a slightly sly upturn of the lips to be finished.

Cookie, above, was the first of my Emus. It was also the first piece that sold at my first gallery show of the Birds. I’d sold a dozen or so on my own to people I knew but strangers bought Cookie and she already had a red dot when I arrived for the opening of the show. Stormy, below, came next and was named for Ms. Daniels who was all over the news at the time. She was long gone by the time I started selling at craft fairs and was the face on the only line of tee shirts I made. I believe I’ve mentioned the little boy who burst into happy tears when his dad bought him one of the Stormy giclees, which I framed for them then and there.

I won’t show you all of the Emus but I would be remiss if I didn’t include Fracas, the collage I made on a gold background with a print of Vago, my favorite of the Emus, along with the War of the Angels mayhem. Those three older Emus are good examples of the goofy, sly and scary phases Domaius went through before I framed him when he was barely dry so he and last week’s Cardinalis could head over to the Ali Gray Gallery to replace pieces that had sold. Best get cracking on more new work, I thought those two were for the August show.

After almost a year of focusing on the contrast and balance of black and white, I felt compelled to return to color. Only now I’m working with the scale of the charcoals. It’s hard to tell from a photograph, but Cardinalis, above, is 18x18” and marks a return to canvas, which I haven’t painted on in decades. Luckily I had save all my large, soft brushes from way back then when I was doing complex oils that were often quite big. I still have slides of that work but not the technology to digitize them now, although I do have this shot Bold As Love, below, from that period. What it has in common with more current work is my use of gold paint as a base or background. It was inspired by a display of dinosaur eggs at The Natural History Museum I saw at the time. Wait. Dinosaur eggs, right, so birds may have been a passion of mine back then as well.

Also this week, I did another study for the kids workshop I’m doing later this summer that I mentioned last week. I have a few more ideas I’m excited about and I’m happy with how this Bluejay turned out. It’s rice paper, colored tissue paper and charcoal on cardboard, and perhaps too messy for a pristine gallery so I may need to streamline the process since my other ideas are even messier. In the meantime, I started a new painting this morning with a metallic gold background on a 12x12” wood panel of an Emu, which is clearly a dinosaur and could be thought of as a full circle moment.

The opening at the Ali Gray Gallery went well enough for the show to be extended an extra week, and I have some good news I can’t talk about yet, but Facebook keeps reminding me of my trips to Newcastle in May of both 2024 and 2025. The pictures from those trips make me a little sad since I was supposed to be moving there this week. At least that was the plan until current political and financial circumstances got in the way. I’m not starving and my bills are paid, but airplane tickets right now are out of the question. I do see Paul online everyday, and making art helps. It has always helped. Some of my best work was done under duress - those dinosaur eggs? I was miserable back then and they came out great. OK, on with the day.

I didn’t think I was going to have a new piece to show you this week, but I rolled out of bed at dawn this morning and did this Dove study. I have a couple projects coming up and the first one is a workshop I’ll be doing at the Ali Gray Gallery at the end of July. It’s geared for tweens and teenagers, so I thought tissue paper, collage and paint markers on sheets of cardboard keep it from getting too precious. Given that, I intend to create several examples of what one can do with one or all of those supplies. The Dove started with charcoal and gesso, followed by a black ink brush pen. I loved it so much, I jazzed up the cardboard with a metallic gold colored pencil background. I can’t wait to play with tissue paper and cut up magazine pages, I envision feathers galore. Maybe that will be next.

In the meantime, Facebook reminded me that it’s been 15 years since I washed ashore in Provincetown and spent that first summer living in this cabin. There’s a certain bird that starts to sing at 3am in the spring and summer and stops before the sun comes up. I believe that bird is a Robin, which so far, I haven’t painted yet. They have a rather syrupy chirrupy song of several notes, a brief pause and those same notes again, ad nauseam. I know, since not only did they wake me up every night in the cabin, but they’re doing it now as well even when the windows aren’t open. I prefer the complex, lyrical call of cardinals, or the chatter of a hoard of sparrows hidden in a hedge until something spooks them and they scatter en masse to the safety of a nearby tree.

And yesterday, I followed this magnificent blue-faced turkey on a main road in town. I’m not sure why he was alone, they’re usually in a mob scene gaggle, and he was so handsome. Ok, on with the day - until next week then.

Definitely late this week, sorry. The Commons show went very well - the opening was packed, as you can see from the photo above, and I held my own talking to strangers about my art. The show’s down now but while it was up, I began work on a complex grant proposal with eight essay sections that are similar but with slight variations. It’s project-oriented and yesterday I worked out the detailed budget for it so I’m almost done. This also stems from The Commons show as well, but let me backtrack a bit. The morning after the opening, I got a call that the Snow Owl had sold and they had cash for me to pick up. I assumed it had sold to one of the women I spoke to about it the night before, but it turned out it went to a woman who saw is image in the local press and drove forty miles to be there when The Commons opened to buy it. Her ATM only gave her enough cash for a deposit, so she drove the forty miles home empty handed but happy with her purchase. She then drove the same forty miles back and forth a few days later with the balance, but this time she left with the Snow Owl and I filled its space on the wall with the Harpy that had been on the Youtube show that I’d kept aside in case this happened. Very cool, very smooth, but while I was there that first morning collecting my cash, a man walked in hoping to find me. He was from the Provincetown Conservation Trust and had seen the windows project and wanted to talk to me about an event he was planning for next spring. I had already been thinking about the project I’m now doing the grant proposal for, and speaking to him pulled my ideas together. Also very cool, and this time serendipitous.

But wait, there’s more. Besides finishing Gatsby, the Starling above, while the show was in progress, and the SIDE Gallery online show that I have a photograph in going live, one of the women I spoke to at the opening was a curator and she contacted me a few days later about a show she was putting together. After some discussion, we settled on two large pieces that weren’t in The Commons show or part of what is going to the Ali Gray Gallery next week, and she came by yesterday with a contract and took the two pieces with her. They had been on my studio wall since my last Commons show in 2024. Luckily, I had the charcoals safely at home by then so my studio wall is not lonely. And if that’s not enough, I also went on a job interview last Thursday that reminded me of my internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Battery Park. I’ve written about it before at least a year ago, it was post-9/11 and part of a program I was in at Pace University, and I was very happy there. I spent most of my time greeting visitors at my reception desk, and on slow days, I read books about Native American art that I borrowed from their research library. I also was a hostess at their film festival, where I met all the Dances With Wolves Indian actors, and attended workshops for kids because they were stringing beads and making masks and corn husk dolls. It was profoundly inspiring and led to me making my own masks, like Feather below, and the papier-mâché sculptures that are some of my best NYC work. So yes, I’ve been busy, I still am, and time’s a wastin’ - on with the day.

Greetings from the lounge at the Provincetown Commons where I am hanging out for a few hours every day while the show is up. The opening is tonight, although I hung the work on Wednesday, and I am very happy with the results. Everything fit without being crowded, as you can see in these shots of some of the show. Harpy#2, which I kept in reserve, has gone to the set of the Wake Up In Provincetown YouTube hourly weekly show so it could be featured in this morning’s video. There’s a screen shot at the bottom of this post.

Besides the YouTube show, I also have nice blurbs with images in the Provincetown Magazine as well as the weekly arts section of the Provincetown Independent. This weekend is the first Friday evening Gallery Stroll in town, so there should be some good traffic tonight, especially since there is a huge collage show opening in another space at The Commons and it’s also getting a lot of attention.

The Commons, by the way, is not just gallery spaces. It is a multifunctional art community organization with studios and co-working areas for creative entrepreneurs plus a number of private meeting rooms of various sizes. It was built in 1935 to replace the 1892 schoolhouse that burned down, and remained a school for decades. Eventually, it was acquired by The Commons we know and love, which after extensive interior renovations, opened in 2017. They focus their solo shows on artists without gallery representation, which I was one of until a few weeks ago, and they let me slide because I am, gratefully, one of their success stories.

In the meantime, the art advisor I mentioned last week bought the two larger pieces of the collection of small works she had on hold for her project. She may come back for the rest of them for a different project, but the gallery is happy to take them since the summer season tourists like little paintings that will fit easily in their suitcases when they fly home. Speaking of which, have you seen the new limited edition US passport design? Luckily I can request the old format when I renew mine this fall. OK, enough about that, on with the day.

A mixed bag of metaphors this week, too many balls in the air, too much on the proverbial plate. First off, big news from the UK. Ebb Tide, my photo above, has been selected by The SIDE Gallery in Newcastle for an online show titled Local Color and will be shortlisted for a future physical show that hasn’t been announced yet. They are highly respected and known for their photography archives - here’s a link to their website. https://sidegallery.co.uk/ In other news, the build up for my show at The Commons, which I’m hanging next week, is going well although I’m on the fence about framing one more piece. Here’s a link to my page on their website’s calendar of events. https://www.provincetowncommons.org/commons-events/2026/4/29/works-on-paper-the-charcoals-by-maureen-mccarron. Also the press releases I sent out got responses from both Provincetown publications, and the Independent has asked for more images so they can feature me on their Indie’s Choice art section of the paper the week of the opening.

In the meantime, the art advisor who has a number of smaller paintings on hold for her building interior project will be here Friday to make her decisions. I have added a few to her selections as suggestions because they work so nicely with what she has already picked out. A couple of them needed a bit of retouching, and this led to some more serious reworking. Calliope, the black cockatoo above, is one of them. I wanted to see if that which worked with the charcoals would work with paint, and I have to say I don’t hate it. There’s another one that’s not done but now has a hot metallic background because Regina, below, one of the art advisor’s picks that needed a little retouching, has one as well. I’d forgotten how much I love a gold background - the way the color changes with the light or when the viewer moves, the contrast of the shiny surface with the matte satin of the bird’s colors. I may be doing more of them as a result soon. OK, on with the day - let’s go.

No photos of New York this week, there’s been too much going on. First is the press release I put together for my upcoming show at The Commons. And BIG NEWS! I signed a contract with the Ali Gray Gallery here in Provincetown. I’ll be included in a group show at the end of May, and a show of my own in August where I’ll share the space with a sculptor who creates what she calls spirit birds, it will be a good fit. Here’s the link to my page on the gallery website - https://aligraygallery.com/artist/maureen-mccarron.

Also signed this week was a new lease on my apartment since I’m unable to move to the UK at the end of May, as I mentioned last week. I can leave with a month’s notice if the opportunity avails itself, but since airfares are now more than double what I paid for my trips there at this time of the year, it may be a while before that happens. In the meantime, I met online with the art advisory consultant who I thought was interested in my doing a mural. In fact, she wants a group of smaller paintings for an office interior she’s working on. Luckily she likes the older work, and this motivated me to bring out some of the earlier birds to show her. One of them, Ichabod above, got repainted this week with a much warmer palette. He’ll certainly look good with the ones she’s selected so far, as would LeRoi, below, which is the oldest piece I still have on hand and was my first bird chosen for a juried show.

Anyway, the galley contract - check, the new lease - check, the press release - check and the art advisory consultant meeting - check, what else happened this week? Ah, right my old lady foot which my GP said needed surgery but the podiatrist he referred me to said it’s a bone spur and surgery wasn’t necessary. Maybe cortisone down the road, but I’m not in chronic pain so why mess with it. Interesting, the gallery owner, the art advisory consultant and the podiatrist are all women. Sensible ones, flexible ones. No bullying or bombast, I like it.

As promised, I’m continuing my NYC photos theme from last week. One can not do a Manhattan spread without water towers, so here are four favorites. Next time, it could be construction sites, because I love them. In the meantime, Facebook has reminded me that it’s been two years since I bought my first tickets to visit Paul in Newcastle. It was a stressful experience. Hitting that final Pay button and dealing with visas and such should’ve been the worst of it, but, no. Getting from Provincetown to Logan in Boston takes almost four hours regardless of how many cars and or buses are involved, and on that first trip, I was halfway there on the airport shuttle when I got a text that my flight was cancelled. The driver, who was listening to my frantic phone calls, said since I had to stay on the bus until it reached Logan anyway, I might as well relax and demand British Airlines put me on another flight once we arrived.

Eventually, I ended up on KLM, which took me to Amsterdam instead of London. But even with the extra couple of flying hours, I was in Newcastle almost on time. I liked the Amsterdam airport enough that I took KLM again for the next trip. The third visit was that disastrous British Air experiment to save time and money, where everything that could go wrong without actually crashing did. Never again. On the fourth trip I went KLM again, but you may recall my being stuck in Amsterdam overnight on the way home. For the last visit, I tried Aer Lingus to Dublin which was shorter as well as cheaper, and because Logan and Dublin have a special arrangement, getting through US Customs was easier. Now that I’m this experienced traveller, that will be the way I go. If I ever get to go, that is.

When people ask why the hell I’m still here, I avoid politics and blame it on money. I just know when I was in Newcastle last October, our plan was for me to move there after my Commons show closes in mid-May. But these days I have been renewing my lease and looking for a seasonal summer job. I’ve begrudgingly accepted having to stay stateside and keep busy here for the time being. I’ve ordered new business cards and the announcement for the Commons show. A new gallery owner is coming for a studio visit later today because she wants to include me in an exhibition. I was also contacted by someone else who wants to discuss a possible mural project. Oooh, I see a giant bird head, à la the Easter Island totems, and a landscape with castle ruins on a distant hill in the background.

Yep, I’m up for that - Onward.

Over the years I’ve been a painter, when I take time off from it, I turn to photography. I do have that painter’s eye from color and composition, and it is another way of seeing. These days I use my cell phone, although I still have my camera. Given my post-cataract surgery issue with not being able to see well enough to paint intricate detail anymore, I have the same problem with taking pictures. It’s hit or miss now, I have to guess at what I’m shooting and take a series of shots, then deal with editing them on my laptop later. I still get good images, but not like I could on my Nikon.

The longest break I took from painting happened in New York in the years after 9/11. I took up collage back then too, but the paintings I was doing were too much like what I saw that day and I needed to get away from those feelings. I’d also taken a job at a Soho gallery on West Broadway. I was good at that job and have worked as a gallerist ever since, but it’s hard to make art and sell art at the same time.

Hence the camera. There are at least 1,000 images in my archives, which I could probably boil down to a hundred really good ones from New York. I also have around the same amount of good quality shots the Cape, but I realized that if I was behind a camera all the time, I wasn’t living my life here. And besides, I wanted to paint.

So, as I chip away at the admin stuff and have no new birds for you, I thought I’d do a couple of posts from the New York City. archives. I’ll start with shots of and from the Houston Street pier, which was only a few blocks from my house. I was over there all the time, I found solace in the stillness way out in the water. It felt like God lived on the river. And maybe he does. Or did, way back then. I think He lives in the dunes of Provincetown too. Anyway, as Kevin likes to say, Onward.

With everything for the show framed and ready to go, I thought I’d show you something other than birds. In addition to grant submissions I’ve been working on, I had an opportunity to enter an open call at the Side Gallery, which specializes in photography in the UK, and while I was editing them to meet size restrictions I decided to desaturate them of color to see how they’d look in black and white. Here are five.

All of these were shot on Cape Cod. The scene at the top and the trains above were taken in Hyannis. The rest are in Provincetown. They seem better, if not fresher, at least to me, in grey tones. But then again, this snowy graveyard is actually the natural color and only appears to be black and white because of the weather that day.

The street scene below was an interesting undertaking because the lines in the road and the house on the right are the same shade of yellow in the original version and it’s quite dynamic. But I think it works this way too, especially since the sky is more dramatic. It’s a bit like the shift away from the vivid colors of my earlier paintings as I took up charcoal as a medium.

And since one can’t do a Provincetown spread without the beach or the dunes - I’ve already spared you the classic rowboat and lighthouse shots - I close with this one of my friends Ron and Michael on the day I took them exploring while they were visiting one summer. Mind those footprints in the sand, they are how you’re going to find your way home.