“Sweet Turmeric,” says the artist, “was inspired from the landscapes in Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini’s masterpiece, St. Francis in Ecstasy. I sought to capture its timeless feel of luminous surface, sensory richness, and smoothness.”

“I believe exploring internally and externally is human nature, these paintings create a play between representation and abstraction that beckons the viewer to traverse between an exotic exoplanet landscape and an entrancing optical art illusion” says McCarthy. “I start by modeling three-dimensional virtual terrains. When I choose a composition, I print them out and transfer the imagery to the final panel by hand.”

Drawing on the Romantic echoes of the Hudson River School tradition of untamed landscapes and epic scale, McCarthy remixes them with the OP Art tradition, computer simulation, and virtual reality, allowing viewers to join in how they perceive and construct the paintings.

McCarthy explores the visualization of unknown worlds while depicting a faraway exoplanet landscape. He says it is “a pursuit that reflects age old questions, why are we here? Are we alone?” By merging the ancient with the modern, McCarthy hopes to bring attention to the importance of human visual perception, and the idea that we are all connected in some way.

Kevin McCarthy was born in Chicago and raised in the wooded suburbs of Northwest Illinois. He attended the Kansas City Art Institute, earning his BFA in painting and printmaking in 1988. Enthralled by the Pacific Northwest, he migrated to Seattle in 1996. McCarthy has participated in local and national exhibitions. Notable projects include Mad Art’s Mad Campus and Art In Great Places in an Everett, Washington storefront. In 2011, he entered and completed the Seattle Pacific University’s ARC program, earning his teaching certificate in K-12 art. He has taught art in the Puget Sound since 2012.