Quentin James McCaffrey: In Conversation with Anna Kristensen

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. 

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.