Josie McCoy

Josie McCoy is an award winning British artist who paints realist portraits of fictional characters from the world of film, television and music.

"I am interested in what a viewer brings with them when looking at a painting of someone they recognize, in terms of memories and references, and how blurred the line between fiction and reality can become.

The subjects I choose are fictional but familiar within contemporary culture. I usually paint female characters in response to the way women have been represented throughout art history, where they have been the passive subject of art. In my paintings, I aim to present them as active protagonists with agency and power.

I also want them to have a timeless, universal quality, in the same way as the iconic stars of the silver screen".

Working from photographs taken from the film or television screen. McCoy's source material is mediated several times from the original: by photography, projection, photocopy and then painted. The viewer is presented with a split second, transformed and suspended in paint.

Using oil paint like watercolour, McCoy builds up the paintings in thin layers of very diluted paint, waiting for each layer to dry before painting again. This process makes the surface of the paintings glow in an imitation of the cinema screen. She uses a green skin colour to reference traditional techniques of painting, where green was used as under-painting to give luminosity to the surface colour. She also often uses a blue skin tone to suggest the glow of the screen on a viewer.

McCoy graduated from the MA Fine Art course at Central Saint Martin's in 1999 and has exhibited widely since.  Her paintings are included in private and public collections including the BBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Collection of University of Wales, Jeremy Mogford Collection, Borchard Collection of British Self-Portraits in the 20th Century and the Ofelia Martín & Javier Núñez Collection.

Her paintings have been selected four times for the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery, and she was shortlisted for the Castellón International Painting Prize and the PS Mirabel Painting Prize. She received a Woo Charitable Foundation Arts Bursary and won the Centre of Attention Painting Prize. 

McCoy's work has been selected  and is currently on exhibition at the RA Summer Exhibition (2021), London.

She has had solo shows in London, Milan, Santiago de Compostela and Valencia and shown in group exhibitions in Europe, South America and the U.S.

McCoy is from Plymouth in the UK and now lives in Valencia, Spain.

Education

1998-1999- MA Fine Art, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London

1995-1997- BA (Hons) Fine Art, Solihull College, Birmingham

Solo exhibitions

Musas, Madres, Magas y Asesinas, Centro Cultural Melchor Zapata, Benicássim

Las Musas de Josie McCoy, Sala de Exposiciones El Oscurico, Buñol

Glow and Celebrity: The Philosophy of Josie McCoy, ATM Gallery, Gijón

New Work, Sporting Club Russafa, Valencia

Reflections, 10 Grosvenor Street, London

Paint3d, Sporting Club Russafa, Valencia

Las Chicas de Almodóvar, DF Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela

New Work, Eyestorm Gallery, Exeter, Ipswich and Milan

New Paintings, Eyestorm / Britart, 18 Maddox Street, London 

The Royle Variety Show, Notting Hill Arts Club, Notting Hill Gate, London

EastEnders, The Centre of Attention, 15 Cotton's Gardens, London