Sean McCarthy (b. 1976 in San Antonio, TX) received his BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited internationally at venues such as Fredericks & Freiser, Marlborough, and Essex Flowers (where his 2020 solo exhibition was named a must-see show by the editors of Artforum) in New York; One in the Other in London; and VOLTA in Basel. His comics and zines have appeared at curated events such as the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and a global survey of zine culture at Cubitt Gallery in London. He was one of twelve artists featured at the Desert Island Comic Zine Party at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and received a 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Fiction for his work in comics.
McCarthy is currently Associate Professor of Art at Lehman College of the City University of New York in the Bronx, where he served as chair of the Art Department from 2014 to 2019. He has given lectures and critiques as a visiting artist at Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Fordham University, taught studio art at Pratt Institute and the New York Institute of Technology, and has participated in residencies at Yaddo and the Vermont Studio Center. He has curated exhibitions at Essex Flowers, the Lehman College Art Gallery, NYIT Manhattan and No Globe Exhibition Space in Brooklyn. He is a member of the editorial board of the academic journal Glossator: Theory and Practice of the Commentary, as well as a contributing writer at The Comics Journal. He lives and works in the Hudson Valley, New York.