In Girls, Shaina McCoy distills portraiture into memory, surface, and presence. The figures are rendered with thick, tactilepaint: faces obscured, features withheld; shifting focus from likeness to feeling. Hair, clothing, and color carry identity, whilethe softened contours suggest intimacy, protection, and closeness. The composition resists spectacle, instead holding a quietemotional weight grounded in familial and relational experience.

McCoy’s work emerges from personal archives and lived memory, aligning with a broader cultural return to intimacy andinterior life within contemporary Black figuration. Her paintings resonate with visual languages found in photography, fashion,and domestic imagery, where softness, texture, and atmosphere replace clarity and definition.

The work is not fractured or reconstructed, but held gently—embedded in memory, relationship, and the persistence of everydayconnection.