Additional Images

Provenance:

Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto, ON
Private Collection, Toronto, ON

Note:

McCarthy took a trip to Arizona, New Mexico, Klondyke, Taos and Abiquiu with fellow painters Judith Finch, Brenda Bisiker and Wendy Wacko from April 1-26, 1998. Finch recalls McCarthy being singularly focused on her work, rising early to paint during the morning before breaking for lunch, after which she would resume painting. “With Doris there was no time to be wasted. She found a suitable view, often spotted the day before, set up her gear and went to work straight off, usually while the rest of us were still wandering about trying: a) to find a place out of the wind, or b) out of the sun, or c) land not too treacherous, or d) out of the line of cars, people, or animals. None of these details seemed to distress Doris one bit; she merely focused on the view and got on with it. Her power of concentration, in spite of all that was going on is legendary.”[1]

While the artist is best known for her Canadian scenes, Arizona Vista displays all of the hallmarks of a classic McCarthy painting. Stuart Reid writes: “there is a communion between the artist and the landscape evident in all of McCarthy's work. She looks at the land. She chooses interesting vistas that are formally sound compositions. Often she sets the major horizon line at the golden mean of the page — a little less than two-thirds up from the bottom. There is a trademark 'folding' of the imagined space into a trinity: foreground, midground, far distance and sky; that recurs no matter what her subject. It often seems as though the foreground is less distinct than the midground, fading into washes at the bottom of the page. This recurring trait does not allow the viewer a sure footing in the scene — the vantage-point is somewhere hovering above the land. McCarthy seems to enjoy this spiritual distance from the points of interest, which are usually out of reach — at picture-postcard distance in the midground of the painting. The artist understands how the human eye wanders over a picture plane...”[2]

[1] Judith Finch, in Celebrating Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy, (Kleinburg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1999), 52.
[2] Stuart Reid, “Island Sketches” in Celebrating Life: The Art of Doris McCarthy, (Kleinburg: McMichael Canadian Art Collection, 1999), 231.