Sarah Bird
Bright Shades
August 8
Opening night reception with Sarah Bird
5-7:30pm
Hemmings Gallery is pleased to present Bright Shades, a solo exhibition by Sarah Bird July 29- August 23. Bright Shades is a collection of oil paintings referring to a type of haunting of the bright, a sense of the yin-yang nature of things.
Drawing on techniques from a background in realism but referencing the warped perspectives of Flemish Primitive paintings, Bird weaves landscape and still life painting together to create self-determined worlds.
“Painting is about the human mind and what our attention reveals about our character and our values,” she says. “I like a painting that doesn’t stay in the bounds of realism like Morris Graves, Gertrude Abercrombie, Leonora Carrington, and Frida Kahlo.”
Layering and rearranging motifs from the history of Western oil painting, Bird uses an old language to depict her contemporary life. Making reference to the surreal twists of Bosch, van Eyck and other Flemish Primitives, her paintings “weird” the landscape often forefronting humble personal objects like seashells, feathers and fruit set against deep mystifying horizons.
In her studio, there may be a few items on display from which she works, but the actual painting lives in her mind, and the result is pure imagination.
“My process is a lot like collage,” says Bird. “I paint without much planning and let my instincts guide my decisions. It’s not always efficient. Often, objects that I spent a lot of time on are edited out of the work and buried under the paint.” She adds, “Living in the West has informed much of my work. My first desire was to be a landscape painter, and I think that although I rarely paint outside now, I’m still driven by that elusive idea of ‘sense of place.’”
Untitled 01
by Sarah Bird
oil on panel
16” x 12”
Untitled 05
by Sarah Bird
oil on panel
40” x 40”
Hemmings Gallery
340 Walnut Ave. | Ketchum
208.254.1097
hemmingsgallery.com
