I have always been interested in identifying an expression that suggests both longing and loss.

My work has gone through stages of subject matter from images of adulthood to the recent exploration of adolescence. I’m interested in the adolescence expression of fragile vulnerability and their knowing and questioning gaze.

By using a “wet into wet” watercolor medium and without specific subject, I wish to convey the transitory and emergent state. The figures heads become too large for their small, narrow bodies, their hands too large for their arms. The watercolor is so translucent that the medium expresses both flaws and perfection.

The process is extremely fleeting and an image is either created or lost within seconds. It can sometimes take weeks to create a watercolor that has the delicate balance of realism and abstraction. In many ways this watercolor process feels much like the immediacy of childhood and adolescence itself. By this process I attempt to explore the dichotomy between uncertainty and focus, and the emotional state that lies beneath the surface.

– Kim McCarty

Like blurry afterimages drifting past closed eyelids, Kim McCarty's watercolors hover between presence and absence, innocence and wisdom, and past, present, and future. Working rapidly, at times using only a single color and at others a haunting, bruise-inspired palette of acid yellows, greens, and browns, McCarty's portraits evoke the sense of uncertainty, ambivalence, anxiety, and loss with which we view today's generation.