FRANK MCCARTHY 1924 - 2002 Born in New York City, Frank McCarthy remembered painting since he was five or six years old. And, at eight years old, he literally painted his third-grade classroom into a corner, at what he remembered as his “progressive” school in Scarsdale. “My pictures had started as drawings on paper but soon the challenge of the large floor area took over and dinosaur drawings spread out farther and farther into the classroom forcing the teacher and fellow pupils to move more and more towards the corner of the room.”
Eventually McCarthy began to paint for galleries in his spare time and within a few years the success of his work for the galleries convinced him to pursue fine art full-time in 1971 and his career as a fine artist took off. The first major exhibition of McCarthy’s paintings, presented in 1973 by the Husburg Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, sold out in just 20 minutes, which convinced him to move to Arizona. And, in 1974 Ballantine Books published The Western Paintings of Frank McCarthy.
During the summers, while in high school, Frank studied at the Art Students League in New York. After graduating from high school, he attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, earning a degree in illustration. His first job out of school was working as an apprentice in a studio in New York City, setting type, working on layouts, and mounting and delivering photographs and drawings. When one of the studio artists resigned, McCarthy was given the job illustrating the covers of Western paperback novels and articles for major magazines including: Colliers, Argosy, and True. His work at the studio also involved illustrating movie posters, including: The Ten Commandments, Hatari!, Hero’s Island, The Great Escape, and working with Robert McGinnis, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Up to the time Ballantine Books published its book on his work, McCarthy worked only in casein, a water-based paint. But then he said, “I started working in oils, which I hadn’t used since school days,” because, “I can achieve almost the same effect, but the colors are a little richer.” McCarthy’s paintings often depict high-speed action and rugged individualism, because as he noted, “People identify with the fellow that fights and wins out over impossible odds. The mountain man was probably the greatest example; but there was also the soldier, cowboy, and last but not least, the Indian who fought against the greatest odds.”
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