McCaffrey and Kristensen met through friends in 2019 and fostered a mutual affection for each other’s work. Anna Kristensen, born in Sydney, Australia, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and teaches Painting at Rutgers University-Newark. She recently had a solo exhibition, Set, at Ditch Projects in Springfield, OR. NYC born McCaffrey is a 2020 recipient of an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and lives and works in NYC. Promises is his debut solo exhibition.
The stories we inherit and tell ourselves become a collection of myths. Often subconsciously, creating promises which we personally depend upon for navigating life. When these structures, principles, morals, traditions or ideas inevitably fail us, the promise is broken. McCaffrey uses the domestic interior as a symbolic space for these understandings, their promises and our experience of them.
Quentin James McCaffrey
Landscape with Pillows, 2020
Oil on Wood Panel
14 x 11 in
McCaffrey uses cultural appropriation in western art and decoration as a general symbol for unconscious personal development in post-imperial international society. As development of society and the psyche straddle pastiche, compilation, and imitation, the lack of clarity of self becomes evidence of the internal psychological void and human state of fragility and vulnerability.
Quentin James McCaffrey
Landscape with Saint, 2020
Oil on Wood Panel
10 x 8 in
25.4 x 20.3 cm
McCaffrey’s paintings draw from Quattrocento Italian painting and 17th century Dutch interiors in their use of simple geometry, symbolism, as well as in their stoicism. In western painting, the domestic interior has been a place for investigating the psyche and intimate relationships. Referencing the nostalgia of 19th century academic painting, his paintings allow a space for questioning the forgetful serenity often depicted and acknowledges an undercurrent of a more complex reality. Drawing a parallel between intimate personal experience and imperfect historic narratives, he compares the domestic and psychological interior, and how they are mutually symbolic and influential.
Quentin James McCaffrey
Bouquet with Column, 2020
Oil on Wood Panel
10 x 8 in
25.4 x 20.3 cm
McCaffrey uses cultural appropriation in western art and decoration as a general symbol for unconscious personal development in post-imperial international society. As development of society and the psyche straddle pastiche, compilation, and imitation, the lack of clarity of self becomes evidence of the internal psychological void and human state of fragility and vulnerability.
Quentin James McCaffrey
Still Life, 2020
Oil on Wood Panel
14 x 11 in
