Solstice Five-O depicts an annual celebration on Pacific Beach in San Francisco. Participants build a huge fire, undress, and wade into the ocean under a sparkling, starry sky. McEneaney appears at the lower left, sketching the scene; the title refers to her age at the time she made the painting. Her work often creatively adapts her personal experiences: “Whenever I paint things that are real, there’s always a lot of editing or supplementing to make the painting,” she explains. “It’s not a strict, journalistic account. In actuality, people were passing around organic crackers and corn chips, but in my painting I made it into fruit and wine. I thought I should ‘take it back to the roots’ and convey the feelings of a bacchanalian celebration.”
Born in Germany, McEneaney moved to Philadelphia in 1973 to attend the Philadelphia College of Art (later the University of the Arts) and subsequently the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where she earned a certificate in painting. Her subjects are the personal and everyday: her studio and home in Philadelphia’s Callowhill neighborhood, portraits of herself and her pets, and scenes of the nearby Rail Park. McEneaney’s work is in many public and private collections, including Woodmere, PAFA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She has received numerous awards, such as an Anonymous Was a Woman grant, a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She is represented by Locks Gallery in Philadelphia and Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York.
