San Francisco artist Alicia McCarthy gained acclaim for her messy, punk rock aesthetic in the 1990s, adding coffee drips, water rings, boot prints, and scrawled handwriting to her multimedia panels. McCarthy’s touch can still be sensed in her recent prints through the sugarlift aquatint method that maintains the painterly qualities of the artist’s hand, allowing McCarthy to brush the image directly onto the printing plate, forming a semi-translucent lattice. The grid, a favorite subject of McCarthy’s, produces vibrant squares of vivid color and negative space as the wavering lines overlap. McCarthy’s work can be seen most recently in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition honoring Bay Area artists.
Alicia McCarthy
UNTITLED (1)
2016
color sugarlift aquatint
40 1/2 x 44 inches
edition 8 of 30