Born 1971 in Pittsburgh, PA
Lives and works in Minneapolis, MN
Paula McCartney photographs constructed landscapes, both those that she finds and that she creates herself. Whether portraying fake birds among real trees or real birds amidst simulated habitats, McCartney’s images explore the gap between our idealized vision of nature and our actual experience of it.
Image Gallery
Paula McCartney, Orange Thrush, 2004, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2010.44.1A-B, © 2010, Paula McCartney
Paula McCartney’s Bird Watching photographs playfully parody the bird watcher’s desire to identify and inventory their avian finds. Although she does not consider herself a birder, McCartney collects field guides and uses them to help name her craft-store birds and provide believable attributions. Like the photographs themselves, the accompanying specimen labels are a combination of truth and fiction. They lend a sense of authority, albeit false, to the images and enhance the illusion. The labels also serve as a reminder that our experience and understanding of nature is mediated through a wide range of tools and cultural conventions, like the field guide.
Paula McCartney, Winter Bluebirds, 2005, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2010.44.2A-B, © 2010, Paula McCartney
Paula McCartney, Vermilion Flycatchers, 2006, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2010.44.3A-B, © 2010, Paula McCartney
Paula McCartney, Brewer’s Blackbird, 2006, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 2010.46A-B, © 2010, Paula McCartney
Paula McCartney, American Goldfinches, 2008, chromogenic print, 24 x 20 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2010.44.4A-B, © 2010, Paula McCartney
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Paula McCartney photographs constructed landscapes, both those that she finds and that she creates herself. Whether portraying fake birds among real trees or real birds amidst simulated habitats, McCartney's images explore the gap between our idealized vision of nature and our actual experience of it. Learn more about The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art.
So with birdwatching I went to a craft store there at the time I was living in San Francisco and I got these birds, and they were very vividly colored. They weren’t very elaborately made but they were just a lot of them were very vivid colors. And I bought birds and I put them in different landscapes that I knew, where they would really stand out.
So I was kind of making the experience I wasn’t able to have myself, in the landscape. I put the birds often times in the middle of the frame so if you imagined as the viewer walking through this landscape the trees would be decorated with songbirds. And that’s really the way that I think of the birds as these sort of decorations, these jewels that adorn the trees within the landscape.