Of The Sea

by Marisa McCarthy

“Through painting I create environments of belonging, where ontologies converge in a point of the American hybrid experience. My work connects figuration with personal archival imagery and memories. Rooted in my Spanish and Indian heritage, I portray experiences of cultural liminality. I depict close friends and family who identify with hybridity and experience what I call “interstitial” identity- ways of existing that are found between grains of sand, that fall between cracks, that are specific and singular, complex and overlooked. My models each experience this state of in-betweenness and un-belonging in relation to race, gender, or sexuality. I approach painting as a method of ethnography in which I negotiate preservation and erasure, activating history and allowing images to persist, transform, and synthesize.”