Biography

Jay McCafferty (1948–2021) was a Los Angeles–based artist whose work explored time and process through a practice based on sunlight and duration.

Born and raised in San Pedro, the port neighborhood of Los Angeles, McCafferty’s work was influenced by Southern California’s landscape and lifestyle. From the late 1960s onward, he worked as a lifeguard, and his deep engagement with outdoor and water sports shaped the contemplative sensibility of his art.

McCafferty earned a B.A. from California State University, Los Angeles, and completed his M.F.A. at the University of California, Irvine in 1973, where he studied with Tony DeLap (1927-2019) and was part of an influential generation of artists, such as Chris Burden (1946–2015) and Alexis Smith (1949–2024). During this period, he mostly worked with video and photography, producing seminal works that were exhibited and collected by institutions including the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, later, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

In the early 1970s, McCafferty developed his signature “solar burn” paintings. Concentrating  sunlight with a lens for long stretches of time he burned holes on paper, cardboard, canvas or other surfaces often previously painted with pigments. This method, at once meditative and performative, became the foundation of a lifelong practice.

Represented for decades by Cirrus Gallery in Los Angeles, Grapestake Gallery in San Francisco, and Mark Moore in Santa Monica, McCafferty was recognized as a significant voice in West Coast conceptual and process-based art. In his lifetime, he exhibited at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Long Beach Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art (now the UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art), and other institutions.

Alongside his studio practice, McCafferty was a dedicated educator, teaching at Los Angeles Harbor College from 1976 until 2019. He lived and worked in San Pedro and later at Hollister Ranch in Santa Barbara County, with his wife, Ellen McCafferty,  where he continued to create until his death in 2021.