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Created in what was McCarthy’s favorite restaurant, the Sushi Drawings emerged from meals shared with friends and family. Spanning six years and comprising 114 works, the series captures the casual intimacy of dining—spilled soy sauce, stray marks and fragments of conversation are absorbed into the drawings, alongside ideas and sketches for projects underway in the artist’s studio.
Themes central to McCarthy’s practice—food, repetition, and humor—are explored through the serial format of the restaurant placemat. Each drawing strikes a balance between chance and intention, merging spontaneous doodles with sustained mark-making. Functioning like pages from an extended sketchbook, the works offer a window into McCarthy’s generative process—drawing as a means of understanding and developing ideas—while also standing as complete, self-contained pieces.
Selected from this expansive series, LOVE ConnoTacTion is rendered in nine colors as a screenprint. It continues McCarthy’s exploration of form, variation, and the visual residue of shared experience and cultural memory. The Sushi Drawings will be the subject of an upcoming publication by JRP|Editions.
Photo credit: © Paul McCarthy. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
