My art and writing draw on my life as a naturalist and observer of texture, form, patterns, rhythms and color moving through space and time. I have worked in a variety of media over the years, including sculpture, photography, paper collage, multi-media, as well as installation works and often in multiples. Many of my most recent Abstract Expressionist work is painted with oil sticks on canvasses I found with pre-existing sketches, another artist’s unfinished paintings. While barely visible artifacts in the final product, those marks are referenced, explored and brought forward in color and shape. Similarly, the raw, unfinished edges pay homage to the absence of clear beginnings and endings. After years of creating art that was more design- oriented and intellectual, the liberating oil sticks encouraged me to draw from an emotional reservoir and my deep connection to the natural world. Influenced by the likes of Frankenthaler and Mitchell, years of sunsets and waters and fields burst abstractly onto the canvas.
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PUBLICATIONS
Blue Mountain Review, "Homestretch," December 2023, pp. 155-160, https://issuu.com/collectivemedia/docs/bluemountainreviewdecember2023
Gray Love: Stories about Dating and New Relationships after 60, Prologue, "Looking at 60,” Rutgers University Press (January 2023)
Orion, Spring 2020, All About Tractors, https://orionmagazine.org/cart/orion-magazine-back-issues/orion-magazine-spring-2020
The Pennsylvania Gazette, "Through a Window, Darkly," November/December 2022, https://thepenngazette.com/through-a-window-darkly/
The Pennsylvania Gazette, "Orchard Bounty," June 2022, https://thepenngazette.com/orchard-bounty/
The Pennsylvania Gazette, "Chainsaw Massacre," March/April 2022, https://thepenngazette.com/chainsaw-massacre/
Goats Milk, "Foraging Asparagus," August 2021, https://goatsmilkmagazine.ca/2021/08/01/foraging-asparagus/
Pigeon Review, "This is What Happens," August 2021, https://www.pigeonreview.com/post/this-is-what-happens
The Pennsylvania Gazette, "Up the Creek and Back," February 2021, https://thepenngazette.com/up-the-creek-and-back/
Mondays at Ten, "Neighborhood Laundry," "Print Out" and "Polysandory," November 2020 (competitive anthology of St Croix Writer’s Circle)
Chestnut Review, Volume 1, Number 3, Winter 2020, “Perfect,” https://chestnutreview.com/wp-content/uploads/CR1-3.pdf
DASH, Layer Cake (print only) 2019
2019 Orison Anthology, “Morning Kenyan,” winner of 2018 Orison Anthology Award in Nonfiction and finalist in the Bridging the Gap Awards at the 2017 Slice Writer's Conference
Eclectica, July/August 2018, Deities of Sicily, http://www.eclectica.org/v22n3/mcvay.html
Meat for Tea, My Buddhist (print only)
Ragazine, Field Farm, https://www.ragazine.cc/cynthia-mcvay-creative-nonfiction/
The Ravens Perch, July 2017, In the Woods, https://theravensperch.com/in-the-woods-by-cynthia-mcvay/
daCunha Anthology 2, On the Road, Editors' Choice winner in daCunha's 2017 Flash Nonfiction Competition, performed in the UK, https://dacunha.global/cynthia-mcvay-on-the-road
Co-author, first edition of Let's Go: Mexico 1985 and contributor to Let's Go: USA 1984
Co-author, with Evon Z. Vogt, "Some contours of social class in a southern Mexican town," Ethnology XXVII:1, 1:1988, pp. 27-44=
AWARDS AND HONORS
2018 Orison Anthology Award in Nonfiction
Editors' Choice winner, daCunha's 2017 Flash Nonfiction Competition, Performed in the UK October 2017
Semi-finalist, Boulevard's Nonfiction Contest for Emerging Writers
Short-list, Anton Chekov Contest New Flash Fiction Review
Finalist, 2nd Annual — Sunshot Book Awards
Honorable Mention, Writer's Relief Peter K. Hixson Memorial Award Short Stories
Honorable Mention, Glimmer Train Press Very Short Fiction contest
Finalist, Palooka Chapbook Contest
Finalist, New Millenium Writings Muse Contest
Finalist, freeze frame fiction
Non-fiction Finalist, Bridging the Gap Awards, Slice Writer's Conference 2017
Member, St. Croix Writer’s Circle, 2019-present
Participant, Bread Loaf Orion, 2016, Bread Loaf Sicily, 2017 and Slice Writer's Conference, 2017 |
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