Quince, bowl and white jug, oil on canvas
Vessel on white cloth, oil on canvas
Charles MacCarthy
Charles MacCarthy was born in 1950 and educated at the Dragon School, Oxford and Westminster School, London. Half French on his mother's side, he comes from a family of painters and sculptors (Geoffroy-Dechaume). He studied Fine Art at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from1968-72 and then at Brighton Polytechnic. From 1974-76, he taught Art at Didcot Girls Comprehensive, and held his first solo exhibition at The Borlase Gallery, Blewbury in 1978. In 1983 he was awarded a major bursary by the Southern Arts Association, which enabled him to give up part-time work as an auxiliary nurse. Since then he has been painting full-time. Charles moved to Herefordshire in 1986 with his wife and two children.
Painting can be many things – descriptive, imaginative, intellectual, spiritual – but it is always a very physical process and the end product is a physical object. When you begin to draw or paint there is an engagement with the materials – the paint, the brushes, the canvas – which, because is a spontaneous process, opens the door to the unpredictable and the subconscious. I think it is this unknown element which is the excitement for an artist.
Any subject has depth to it if you are prepared to forgo the more obvious solutions: the literal, the preconceived and the superficial. The task of the painter is to be patient and to wait for things to reveal them. You have to put aside all desires for a certain kind of picture, for something that will please or impress, and for easy solutions,
Beauty is elusive and fleeting, not something fixed and permanent. It is the product of an interaction with the visual world: a coming together of interior and exterior qualities. In the end, the making of something physical and tangible out of this dialogue is what matters for the artist. But even if there were no end product it would still be a valuable and enriching process: a form of meditation.
Charles MacCarthy, 2005