faculty

Hilary McCarthy is a contemporary figurative painter living in Laguna Beach. She is currently adjunct faculty in the Fine Arts Department at Laguna College of Art + Design. Prior to that she lived in NYC for 18 years. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries in the United States and Europe. She received her BFA from Hartford Art School and her MFA from New York Academy of Art. She also attended The Art Students League and Columbia University. She has attended art residencies in Puglia, Italy; Victoria, Australia; Leipzig, Germany, and Johnston, Vermont. She received the Fostering Creativity in a Time of Crisis Grant in 2020 from the Laguna Beach Community Foundation.

My paintings aim to be visual poetry based on dreams and the subconscious. As a subject in my recent work, the ocean is healing both physically and emotionally to me. It existed before we did. It is wiser than we are. We need it more than it needs us. I am constantly inspired by its majestic beauty. The women I paint in the foreground deal with the messy complexities of the human condition. In the background, the ocean forms a vast rhythmic backdrop. The narrative of the painting tests these two interfaces.