Lynn McCarty

May 15 - June 28, 2025

Opening Thursday, May 15 at Nancy Hoffman Gallery will be an exhibition of new oil paintings on aluminum by artist Lynn McCarty, on view through June 28, 2025.

The abstract works continue the artist’s interest in layering, process, edges, color, line, shape, light, and space. The artist explores the dialogue of forms within the parameters of the panel. Some paintings are edgy, containing amoeboid-like shapes quivering in a pool of limpid color, while others are radiant appearing to emanate light from within.

With scale as with color, McCarty encourages us to reconsider our perceptions. Though these aluminum panels of unique framework and structure are clearly paintings, they float object-like on the wall.

To make the work, McCarty builds a skin of oil paint and alkyd medium on the aluminum surface using anything but brushes to pour the paint. For instance, eye droppers, basters, paper cups, squeegees, and her hand—no brushstrokes. She is interested in liquidity, in building elusive, sensual surfaces varying in nature. Developing this process has provided the artist with a repertoire of technical options and know-how to wield her way through and across the painting’s surface.

Explains McCarty, “The pieces are poured over, sometimes in many layers, each layer directly effecting the next. Each layer can evolve slowly, quietly, or change drastically with a new pour—transparent or opaque, dynamic change or subtle fusion. I love finding the random unexpected beauty in the work. The viewer can see how the edges were formed, and how the surface and topography influence the results. Impulsivity and risk-taking are my favorite instincts, yet I am preserving, tracing, and highlighting aspects of each consecutive layer.”

She continues, “In essence, it may replicate how nature itself moves and integrates within a changing landscape. Thinking of wood striations, sand rivets, rivers winding, boulders and rocks in water, pushing and pulling between soft and hard.”

About the Artist:

Lynn McCarty was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1961. She received a B.F.A. from Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio and an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. She currently lives and works in New Paltz, New York.

The artist’s work has been shown at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio; Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan; Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France; Portsmouth Museum of Art, New Hampshire; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York; and Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona. Her work is included the collections of The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio and she is included in the Vatican Collection, Art in Embassies Program, United States Department of State. McCarty is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Scholarship and a Pollock-Krasner Grant.