Briana McCarthy

Rapture

2021, acrylic on torch burned wood, 32 x 13 1/2 inch

There is freedom in letting the world you know burn away so something new can begin. Rapture illustrates an occasion of release: not forced, but a choice to let go. An action of accepted risk and trust in oneself and the world. The figure dances, not wreathed in flame, but the burning source of it. The concerns and grudges that stalked her day to day, preying on her wellbeing, billow up and away from her. The wooden slab has been burned with a butane torch. From the outside, it looks like her world is destroyed. She’s burned it down. She did, and now, her possibilities are endless.

Rapture Detail

Head Chop

2021, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inch

Grief is devious. It’s loud and encompassing, then dulls and diminishes, only to come back, biting, unexpectedly. It never fully withdraws, lingering in the eaves, waiting. As life continues on, we become more accustomed to its strikes. We form rituals to cope and ease the sting of an ever open wound.
The black dog, often a malevolent being or omen of death, takes the role of grief. The battle plays out under a foreboding and hopeful sky, on a red poppy-covered hillside: they are the color of blood and often represent remembrance and sacrifice in western culture. Each time the dog attacks, the human figure fights, beheading the creature and gaining some respite. The head always grows back.

Guardian

2021, acrylic and dried plants on canvas, 18 1/4 x 12 1/2 inch

We do what we can, or what we think we can, to heal and affect our world and situations. This piece explores ritual, how the act can feel like affect, and its influence on our self image. Presented cloaked and surrounded in an assemblage of dried plants, the blue, painted figure slices into her own arm, an allusion to ritual and bloodletting. Her blood is bee balm petals, nature flowing through her and a plant used in traditional medicines. She is blue: human but something else. The figure’s cloak, pose, and halo mirror historical representations of holy or saintly figures in art, while the oval canvas harkens to the domed architecture they were often presented in. The giving of our time or effort can shift our own sense of self into the realm of sainthood. She basks in the act, but her eyes are closed to the actual effect, or lack of. The plants around her spot and brown. They are fragile: dried and dead.

Slippery

2021, acrylic and wood burning on wood, 15 3/4 x 28 1/4 inch

Through age or trauma, our bodies and minds slip away from us. We grasp for past, present, and future as they slide through our hands. We grapple with the knowledge and fear of what is occurring and a fate we can’t control.

The scene plays out on a rough wood slab. The curling wood grain alludes to the riverbed and the movement of water and light. A metaphor for the thing being lost, the eels wind around the figure’s feet and hands. They are bright and enticing, close…so close, but slippery and hard to grip. The figure is transparent, hard to make out without closer investigation, though there is an apparent gap among the eels. Observers and the afflicted both experience the loss. One loses memory of the past as it is replaced by the present; the other loses themselves. 

Slippery Detail

The Hounds

2021, acrylic on paper with wooden frame, 18 x 23 inch

We exist in a continued battle for control with our emotions, especially the negative ones. We don’t express them for a number of reasons: it’s socially unacceptable, we don’t want to acknowledge them, we don’t understand them…the list is long. Eventually, we reach a breaking point. A point of howling, volatile release.

Here, that moment has come. The figure is green; an unnatural human tone and a color of sickness. From their onset, these moments often cause pain and destruction. The black hounds, beings of malevolence, burst violently from her chest and tear through the wooden frame. She is held firmly in place. This was not her conscious choice and she is powerless to stop what has begun. In the instinctual depths of her, she knows this is necessary for survival. Is she screaming in anguish or ecstasy? 

Kill It

2021, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 11 inch

When we believe or feel something strongly over time, it becomes anchored within us. It becomes part of our truth. When that is challenged, it is jarring. Discordant emotions and logic fight for dominance. Peace is hard won, if it ever is.
This work reflects that struggle. The hare, our belief and the strong emotion it is tied to, is wrapped in your ribcage, covetously protected. It is bright, warm, and right. Then new knowledge or perception disrupts the dogma. What you feel and know fluctuates: volatile and unresting. Your sheltering ribs lose solidity, yet remain intact, as you long for the bright, warm, rightness but grapple with the betrayal. Knowing what you know, feeling what you now feel, how can you keep what was? It feels like a lie, but you can’t let it go. If only you could reach inside and kill it. 

Devour

2021, acrylic on torch burned wood, 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 inch

We all face an inevitable end. As we journey toward it, some will lose more than others, but all will lose something.

A circular, wood piece with a carefully routered edge, crafted to hang and display some precious, collected item, has been burned and warped. The flame of a butane torch has obscured the grain, drying the wood until it cracked and contorted. The treatment of the wood reflects the agony experienced as memory and identity are lost ⸺ decimated. The figure sits quietly, ignoring or oblivious to the beast, who is age, time, or illness. Much of her is eaten away by the darkness of the room. As pieces of us slip away, as the world becomes unrecognizable, we find ourselves confined. The space we inhabit or know how to inhabit shrinks. She gazes out at the world and the light, as what she knows and who she is trickles away. The beast crouches in the darkness and feasts. 

Devour Detail

Queen Bitch

2021, ink on paper - lightbox, 21 x 10 inch

This is a side by side of a single image. The left is the lightbox when it is off and the right is when it is on. If displayed in person, the box would be in its own lit booth or room. A cord would run from the box to a dial labeled on/off. When the viewer turned the dial to illuminate the lightbox, the lights in the space would darken simultaneously. The interaction allows the viewer to observe at their own speed and consider the control we have, or don’t, over our own perception of others and their perception of us.

The room is bright and the unlit image is black and white. The female figure wears a crown and looks back at her journey, her accomplishment. She wears a gold crown: Queen of the mountain. Once lit, and in the darkness, a sinister face appears behind her, her crown elongates into horns, and the valley fills with skulls. In our heads and our own dark spaces, we can make monsters of people that are where we want to be. Successful women are often demonized, their accomplishments and identity diminished as they are relegated to a bitch or ball-buster. Some take the role and run with it because at least that is a role of strength among the many roles of weakness that society tries to assign. Often women feel pressure to be sweet and overly kind, to allow themselves to be walked on to avoid the label, but it isn’t our responsibility. The viewer turned on that image, it is their responsibility to turn it off.

Ruin Detail 1/2

Ruin Detail 2/2