Inner Visions: Works by Shannon McCarthy Artist Talk
Clare Gallery
St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church
Hartford
Sept. 20, 2025
When Shannon McCarthy got hit by a car in Florida, the first feeling that she had was anger.
The incident occurred when she was 19 years old, a junior at the University of Florida. She was weaving in and out of traffic with her bike when a car slammed into her, launching her into the air. As she was flipping in midair, McCarthy said she felt angry, because she couldn’t believe that this was the way that she was going to die.
And then it happened. She said she saw a golden, undulating web that spread across the earth as far as the eye could see. At the vertices of the web, she saw a bell. She felt light pulsing from the web. More than that, the web felt like love. It was a vision. She’d had them since she was a child, but they were infrequent.
An angel appeared, and wrapped its wings around her. McCarthy bounced off the asphalt, her helmet saving her life. The accident left her with a diagnosis of temporal epilepsy, and a dramatic increase in the frequency of her visions.
McCarthy has walked a line between science and faith ever since. She touched on that line during an artist’s talk at the Clare Gallery, explaining the process behind her work in her Inner Visions exhibit. I wrote about the exhibit a few weeks ago, and was excited to see how my thoughts about the work compared to McCarthy’s.
My interpretation of her work comes from a perspective of someone who is learning spirituality; McCarthy has been rooted in faith her entire life. For her, the question isn’t whether the visions come from God, but instead how best to share her sight with the rest of us. The art that she creates is both welcome and warning. McCarthy fully embraces God’s love, but she has also seen hell in her visions.
One element of the exhibit that I didn’t discuss in my first review is a timeline that takes up an entire section of wall. It’s a work in progress that chronicles European history from 1330 through 1530, focusing primarily on the Hundred’s Year War. McCarthy is fascinated by Joan of Arc, the French heroine who declared that visions from God directed her to save France from the British.
Some scholars have speculated that Joan of Arc’s visions may have resulted from some form of epilepsy. But after researching her extensively, McCarthy feels that Joan’s visions truly came from God, as only divine inspiration could explain her accomplishments.
That is what’s so fascinating about McCarthy’s approach to spirituality, religion and science. I asked her if she felt that her visions were a result of her injury, similar to how Harriet Tubman was injured in her youth and began receiving powerful religious visions. McCarthy said she thinks the injury did jumpstart her visions, and even the sporadic ones she received as a child began during an illness.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not a gift from God. McCarthy said she believes event can happen that can open up “a hallway within us where we can become more open to God.” I think I find myself walking down that hallway.
