D. Michael McCarthy was born in Los Angeles, California in 1951. As a young man, visits to art museums whetted his appetite for painting; at the same time, he showed a strong interest in the outdoors. This combination of interests matured, and with his innate talent honed in the studio, has led to McCarthy becoming one of the Southwest's premier landscape artists.

His hero is Thomas Moran, and his paintings clearly reveal the influence of the Hudson River School. But they also reflect his personal experiences backpacking, kayaking, canyoneering or mountain climbing to remote and beautiful sites around the world. McCarthy familiarizes himself intimately with the terrain before beginning a painting. He has chartered boats to explore sea caves off the coast of the Hebrides, climbed 12,000 foot peaks in the Rockies to find the best views of adjacent mountains and carried heavy packs onto uncharted plateaus of the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Spelunking into caves in Malaysia, exploring active volcanoes in Hawaii, snowshoeing onto glaciers in British Columbia, McCarthy's love of nature propels him to find "that wilder image." Thousands of field sketches attest to this fact.

McCarthy has been invited to do residencies at several National Parks and was twice Artist-In-Residence at Glacier National Park. In 1998, he was named International Peace Park Artist of the Year, and his work is in the permanent collection of the National Park Service.