Instructor: Catherine McCarthy
Wednesdays
January 26 - February 16
5:30pm - 7:30pm
5 sessions
ONLINE via Zoom
This winter drawing workshop embraces the season of darkness, inviting participants to align eye and hand through the careful observation and recording of artifacts from the natural world.
Drawing shares a natural kinship with meditation. Through sustained attention, participants will train the mind toward calm and focus, gently detaching from habitual thoughts and language. Each week, participants will gather their own organic subjects during intentional walks, allowing a personal relationship with the material to guide the work. Artists of all experience levels are welcome and will find much to gain.
Instruction will focus on core drawing fundamentals including scale, line, mass, and tonal relationships using pencil and charcoal. During the darkest weeks of the year, drawing becomes a means of kindling a steady, focused energy.
This workshop mirrors the Catherine’s own January practice, when she steps away from painting to draw a single amaryllis bulb as it slowly transforms into flower. This quiet, sustained act of observation offers a singular focus that resets energy and intention for the year ahead, grounding the painting practice that follows.
Catherine McCarthy is a Boston based painter with an extensive exhibition history. She has been featured in 24 solo exhibitions including at the MFA in Boston, the Kemper Art Museum in Kansas City, the San Jose Art Museum, and the Knoxville Art Museum. She has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions including at the Harvard University Museum and the Rose Art Museum, among others. Her paintings are in the collections of the MFA, Boston, the Kemper Art Museum, the Rose Art Museum, the DeCorodova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Phoenix Museum of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, as well as many corporate and private collections. In 2024 her work will be featured in shows including at the PAAM, as a Lillian Orlowsky William Freed award winner, and at the Fitchburg Art Museum in the exhibition “In Her Own Terms: Feminine Power Embodied. Catherine’s work has been reviewed by Art In America, Artforum, The Boston Globe, San Fransisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury, and The New York Times as well as featured in Oxford American, Arts and Antiques, Audubon, Boston Magazine, The Denver Post, and Art New England. She studied at The Ruskin School at Oxford University and received her BFA from Mass College of Art.