SARAH DILLON

 

Place, as a multifaceted sensibility can function as a catalyst for art-making that delves into the depths of self-reflection, social analysis, politics and history, and offers up an excellent conceptual basis for creativity as well as human interaction.  As a visual artist, it functions as the backbone of my work as I contemplate time, memory, narrative, change and ultimately explore what it is to be where I am.  I encourage self-reflection in life around us in effort to define or question truth. 

 

My recent body of work travels inward to a sentimental nostalgia built abstractly from family snapshots; an internal, deep reflection on time and memory.  In this work I contemplate the longevity of human life and how unstable and unpredictable the future is. The only stability that I can seem to find in the increasingly chaotic world right now is in the past. As imperfect and riddled as it is with its own strife, it is a known entity.

 

The figure comes in and out as fragmented, abstracted form sometimes clearly in narrative focus and sometimes remanence of color, shape, form, texture responding to broken memory more conceptually.  I have been very aggressive with the surface of these paintings, pre-planning a layering process that involves deep sanding into the surface at various stages of completion to reveal pieces of underpainting.  I then respond with new built-up layers to reveal a deep and varying surface depth to the paint. 

 

Sense of place is deep-set within this series.  The places I return to in my memories, the places from my memories that I take my own children to experience and the things I think I have forgotten, coming back to me in in bits and flashes.

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