Subtracting the Imaginary

Drawing inspirations from her surroundings, Sarah’s works converse with films like Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, artists like Etel Adnan (1925-2021), concepts like pentimento and Moloch, and deriving from personal memories of climbing Ararat. Painting up to a hundred layers, the process evidently consumes time. It is a factor that is both a friend and enemy of the artist —first being familiar and in close proximity. Then a forgotten memory that reemerges onto the surface. An enemy when time stretches too long to endure and too short to be stable enough to be carved. Once satisfied, the painting is completed and then given a title. The works in the exhibition found a commonality in the relationship between Sarah and her art practice. She is the force that manipulates the paint's formation, giving life to an integrated, submersed psychedelic world of colours. Naming each piece is a delayed response from being detached and later looking back at that moment.