Drawn Through Time

Penny McCarthy spent months studying Titian’s rarely displayed woodcut The Submersion of the Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea (c.1549) from Sheffield Museums’ collection.

Through redrawing and creating new works that explore its themes of submersion, travel, time and the cosmos, she uses drawing as a tool to re-evaluate art history and the passing of time.

McCarthy invited artists George Shaw (Turner prize nominee 2011), James Pyman, Billy Hughes, Jonathan Owen, Emma Kay, Marissa Textor and Fleur Patrick to journey with her. Each uses the slow, attentive process of drawing to gain insight into other artists’ work and the past. Shaw reflects on his childhood in Coventry; Pyman recreates the imagery of mid-century comics and historic novels in large-scale; and Hughes’ photorealistic drawings revisit found images and use AI to project them into imagined futures.

Image made from details of: How I wanted to be that sky – to hold every flying and falling at once, 2021 by Penny McCarthy and The submersion of Pharaoh’s Army in the Red Sea, c. 1549 by Titian