About

If one of the aims of ‘Portraiture,’ writ large, is to capture the subject—to freeze-frame something of their individuality—McCoy excels at this with a startling simplicity of means: fields of flat color and blank, featureless faces. Despite this, the seven portraits that comprise ‘B is For’ are evocative of their subjects, of their personalities, and a host of other ineffable characteristics that amount to the truest, deepest kind of likeness.

The kind of representation McCoy is after, though, exceeds this personal scale. What is really represented in these portraits of Mae Mae, Sophia, Ash, …