Lynn McCarty -
Pushing Paint
American, b.1961
Pushing Paint, 2007
Oil on aluminum, 43.5 x 74.75 inches
08.039
Gift of the Alumni Board of Governors
McCarty is more interested in “forming a form” than in describing a form. For McCarty, color is a primary subject of her paintings filled with the artist’s personality, her moods, her ups, and downs, her swings of life. Her palette is broad and individualistic. Unique too is McCarty’s technique, or process. The artist builds a skin of paint on the aluminum surface using anything but brushes to paint such as eye droppers, basters, towels, squeegees, and even her hand. Not a fan of brush strokes, she is interested in liquidity, in building elusive, sensual surfaces, varying in nature.
“The title of this piece Pushing Paint, is a direct reference to the process of its creation. Although my painting vocabulary has always embraced and celebrated the irregularities and beauty inherent in my pouring process, this piece in particular exemplified a slightly different direction for my work. The group of works I created during this time used white paint to carve out and help delineate other colorful pours, emphasizing the natural fluidity while defining individual shapes.”
-Lynn McCarty 2009
