Sarah Lutz employs an additive, fluid, and responsive process to build paintings and drawings that feature clusters of forms suggesting habits of profuse growth. Her most recent body of work, The Cenote Series, was inspired by snorkeling in sink holes in the Yucatan, Mexico. She is the recipient, with Beth Dary, of the first At MAPSpace Collaborative Workspace Residency.
The subtle contradictions that exist within a painting are what interest me most. I want
my work to be beautiful, but at the
same time unsettling. I would like it to
be serious, but with a comic aspect. I
believe that this complexity adds another level of richness to the world that resides within the painting.
Although rooted in an
abstract tradition, my paintings make clear
references to the natural world. It is
my intention that the images depicted, while not recognizable per se, are believable and exist naturally, and
logically, within their own environment. These latest works reference an
imagined undersea world where life forms emerge from the surface and gravity
and weightlessness co-exist.
Subject matter and process are interwoven; the way the
paintings evolve, both technically and conceptually, is of special interest to
me. The built-up heaps and piles of paint really are built-up heaps and
piles of paint: the material, the process and the subject. I want to be true to the pure physicality
of the paint while also hinting at something larger, ethereal and unknown. My hope is that a compelling tension exists within these paintings; that they
feel simultaneously familiar and mysterious.
miranda arts project space
www.mirandaartsprojectspace.com