Doris McCarthy

Doris McCarthy traveled extensively across Canada, the Arctic, Europe, New Zealand, and various countries in Asia where she created abstracted landscape paintings in each region.[1] On these trips, McCarthy developed her unique artistic style of drawing objects with hard-edged angles, form, and colour, influenced by the Post-Painterly Abstraction Color Field and the Minimalist movements of the sixties.[2] She studied with Group of Seven painters, including Arthur Lismer (1885 – 1969) and J.E.H MacDonald (1873 – 1932), who offered her a teaching position at the Toronto Art Gallery and later at Grip Ltd. where many members of the group worked.[3] McCarthy was expected to work for nothing because she was a woman, and so declined the offers and instead taught art at Central Technical High School.[4] In her memoir My Life, she reflects upon her personal journey, “So here I am, content to enjoy every day as it comes, and wise enough to thank God for his mercies and rejoice in them” [5] she said. “My only regrets are my economies (never my extravagances)—particularly those of spirit and love.” [6] McCarthy is best-known for her Canadian landscapes and her depictions of Arctic icebergs such as the painting Glacier Bay (n.d). 

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Click here to read more about McCarthy's Glacier Bay (n.d.).

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Notes:

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[1] “The Life of Doris McCarthy | Papers of Doris McCarthy,” University of Toronto Scarborough Library, accessed March 28, 2024, https://doris.digital.utsc.utoronto.ca/content/life-doris-mccarthy.

[2] Nancy Campbell, “Doris McCarthy Roughing It In the Bush,” Doris McCarthy Gallery (blog), accessed March 28, 2024, https://dorismccarthygallery.utoronto.ca/publications/essays/doris-mccarthy-roughing-it-in-the-bush#:~:text=McCarthy%20had%20experimented%20with%20abstraction,to%20make%20itself%20felt%20in.

[3] Anne Kingston, “The Cult of Doris,” Macleans, July 20, 2010, https://macleans.ca/culture/the-cult-of-doris/.

[4] Kingston.

[5] Doris McCarthy, Doris McCarthy: My Life (Toronto: Second Story Press, 2006), 241.

[6] McCarthy, 241.