membership / artist member

Sarah Dwyer

http://www.sarahdwyer.com
download cv here

Sarah Dwyer was featured in Contemporary Art Society's ARTfutures 2007 held at Bloomberg SPACE, London.

Dwyer is fundamentally an abstract painter, yet elicits a strong need to cope with tangible things. Curious amorphous forms are constructs of her memory, where half-remembered fragments of found imagery (magazines and newspapers) or various experiences are mapped out, often imbued with an historical aura.

Such visions are then drained of their original meanings, where transparent thin veils of paint lie alongside coarse brushstrokes & rough textures. Canvases are often worked on simultaneously then left to gestate in the studio; old works are revisited and remade - undergoing a continual process of editing and refining, subsequently retaining something of their past through the paintings’ multiplicity of layers. This sense of the passing of time attempts to slow the viewer, revealing periods of objective contemplation and a keenly developed intuition.

While gesture and action predominate in her work, be it the fluctuating rhythms in her application, or the painting and rapid erasure of certain forms, Dwyer possesses the freedom to instinctively trust and follow her imagination. Her interest in the light created in historical paintings, and her re-workings of imagery that has caught her eye; specifically an affinity with Goya’s inclination for fantasy and invention where the layering of imagery emerges from dark recesses, all allude to certain thought out motivations. Yet the importance for Dwyer is to act both consciously and unconsciously – to be as content not knowing as to be somewhat in control.

To observe Dwyer applying paint, and she remains only one of a few artists that are quite happy to proceed in front of you while having a meeting in the studio. The brush is pushed around in quick almost impatient gestures; dabs and squirts of oil paint are squeezed out over countless layers of thin surface and underpainting. The finished work succeeds in its dichotomy of loose wondrous areas, aligned with more tight, refined, cared-for and literal suggestions. Dwyer’s paintings are boisterous. They are filled with punches and jabs, yet can be strikingly ephemeral and quiet at the same time. They are at once personal images of a particular inner life that slowly begin to gain resonance for us all.

http://joshlilleygallery.com/sarah-dwyer/

• ARTfutures 2007

  7th March — 12th March 2007
  Bloomberg Space 50 Finsbury Square London EC2A 1HD