Paula McCartney
Paula McCartney makes artist books, photographs, and ceramics that illustrate her collaborations with the natural world and consider ways that light activates both objects and environments.
She has received fellowships in both Artist Books and Photography from the McKnight Foundation and grants from Women’s Studio Workshop, the Aaron Siskind Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board, and was an artist in residence at The Hambidge Center and Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
McCartney’s photographs have been exhibited nationally in exhibitions at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Her books are included in the artist book collections of the Walker Art Center, Museum of Modern Art, Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University, Getty Research Institute, New York Public Library among many others. She has two published monographs Bird Watching and A Field Guide to Snow and Ice.
She holds an MFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and a certificate in Creative Studies from the International Center for Photography.
Artist Statement
Hide the Sun illustrates a landscape of personal reflection and contemplation on the dualities in life. While sunlight is absorbed by dark backgrounds during the day and absent at night, the color yellow flows through the series providing a simulated source
of illumination. Yellow is the most visible color of the spectrum. Next to black, it appears brighter than white. Yellow is associated with enlightenment and optimism but also caution.
In the photographs, flowers bloom and ferns unfurl in continuous renewal, while hands reach out in longing and people freeze in melancholic thoughts. Trees and branches break, dying a sculptural death, more beautiful than when they were whole. Subjects surface from the darkness and float on the surface. Nature feels displaced in the dark night, artificially lit by the flash, presented as evidence. Shadows have more presence than the objects that cast them. The flowers that bloom in the summer don’t last as long as I hope, while the tree that split apart years ago still stands outside my window.
Release Date: September 27, 2024
Wrapped in bright yellow optimism in a dark uncertain environment, this self-portrait represents a reflection on the dualities in life that I explore in my series Hide the Sun.
Yellow Sweater, 2016