Inner Visions: Works by Shannon McCarthy
Clare Gallery
St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church
Hartford
Sept. 4, 2025
Somehow, Shannon McCarthy knows exactly what’s in my heart.
I don’t say that lightly, but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered artwork that speaks to me as directly and specifically as hers does. Her new gallery, Inner Visions at St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church’s Clare Gallery, features artwork that straddles the line between here and the hereafter, and asks to examine not only our place in the universe, but the way we construct our understanding of the universe itself.
McCarthy has had visions since she was a child. A car accident in college left her with a diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy. She said that her work “expresses the ‘soft edges’ between what she sees as her gift and what might be a result of her disease.”
What a fascinating concept to try and capture in two-dimensional form. There are unseen forces at work in our universe all the time, and I’m not even talking in a metaphysical sense. Radio waves, WiFi, Bluetooth — all these technologies operate on waves of energy that we cannot detect as humans, but are obviously present. McCarthy has access to another wave of energy, more spiritual in nature, and that’s what she paints.
Superorganism: Wake Up Now feels like McCarthy took all of my conflicted thoughts about meaning and existence and compressed it down onto a canvass. The central image, slightly off-centered and leaning forward as if racing forward, resembles a brain. Or does it look like a jelly fish? Or is it the crown of a tree? McCarthy’s impressionistic strokes and dreamlike approach to color makes it easy to see how structurally similar things are in nature. It speaks to her idea of the superorganism as something that is discrete, but also general. Not everything looks like this, but alot of things do, and that’s no coincidence.
What is wonderfully coincidental (or maybe not a coincidence at all again) is that McCarthy painted Superorganism the same year I became aware of my own thoughts regarding such a concept. It was right after NASA published the first images of a black hole ever captured. As I looked at the wonders of space, it suddenly dawned on me that all things, from my body to this supermassive black hole, are made out of the exact same stuff. And when I die, I’ll become part of the planet and the stars and yes, someday, possibly a black hole.
So if I become part of a black hole someday, and I was alive, when what’s left of me gets there, what does that make of the black hole?
That’s what led me to the superorganism, that the universe is alive and we’re all part of an unfathomably large and complex entity that’s growing and learning. When we study the universe, it’s the universe studying itself, teaching itself, because we are the universe.
But that’s not where McCarthy’s probing of my mind ends. She has said before that “psychic aptitude, extrasensory perception, intuition and the heart” are ways of knowing that are worthy of examination. Of course, such ideas are often rejected in our post-Enlightenment world, where data and reason rule.
I agree with McCarthy, and I think we’ve gone too far in the direction of reason and logic. Not only have we rejected “supernatural” means of interacting with the world, but we’ve also rejected the emotional in favor of the rational. How often do we chastise people for their emotional states, particularly children? How many times have you ignored the way you feel to go to a job you hate, to a relationship that isn’t working?
That’s what I find so moving about McCarthy’s painting Lady in the Garden. The central figure stands smiling, holding a cardinal in one hand and a bouquet in the other. The painting itself looks like a vision, an impression of flowers. But I think there’s more here than that. The central figure, presented almost like a Madonna, is surrounded by a garden of energy. Like McCarthy, she can see what the rest of us can’t, and the swirling oranges and reds surrounding her are the waves of celestial energy that fill our world the same as invisible x‑rays.
There are things we can’t see or touch, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t touch us. McCarthy pulls back the veil on part of that world, and it comforts me to know that I see the world in a way that’s similar to at least one other person.
NEXTThe Clare Gallery will host Shannon McCarthy for an artist’s talk regarding her work on September 20 from 5:30 – 7:00 PM. Yours truly will be there.
In the meantime, Jamil is going back to Parkville to celebrate Brazilian independence.
