The Return Painting

Deb McCarroll is an emerging artist living and working in Seattle, WA. She's an award-winning painter and writer, having been featured in the arts magazine Stone Voices Arts Quarterly and Still Point Arts magazine. She won 'Best Painting' in the Still Point Gallery 'Abstracts' juried competition. Her book, 'The Long, Hot Walk' was short-listed for the prestigious Nancy Pearl award and won a North Street book prize. McCarroll has exhibited nationally and her work is featured in numerous private collections. Trained in graphic design, McCarroll's work deliberately resides in the space between figurative and abstract. Her acrylic paintings feature selectively oxidized metal leafs over textured color, resulting in pictures full of movement and light. The work explores themes of nature, dreaming and memory. "I'm always juggling lots of different things in my work, but I suppose my main interest is the process of painting itself. I say process because my way of working isn't just about paint. I try to work with materials that show age and history. The metal leafs oxidize and tarnish in unpredictable ways and I love that. I love 'painting' with that chemistry. It's an organized chaos. I rub in dry pigments, I scratch and sand and generally do all I can to give the work depth. It's labor-intensive but the result is often light and spontaneous."