We are currently featuring artist Sarah M. Timberlake. Her marks create a story that shows the effect that surroundings can make on an artist. You can view these works in person at Gallery 72 or browse them online here.

Artist Statement:
After much time spent as a photographer and installation artist, I wanted to begin making work that was more direct, more visceral. I turned, in around 2006, and after many years away, to painting and drawing, beginning my exploration of making marks on paper. I wanted to remove “the disconnect” I felt between myself and the work I was making as a photographer, wanting to make art that was more immediate and less contrived. I wanted to work more immediately than I did as a sculptor. These pieces started as just experiments, just to see what I could do with brush, paint, oil stick and paper.

I am trying to make things that are incoherent present, visual. I end up chasing the lines I start with; I work in series, usually 3-5 pieces at the same time so the energy can flow between pieces. Immediacy is important. Working on paper with paint and oil stick is a key to this, as there is no turning back, no erasing or rubbing out; you’re committed to the image you’re starting or you have to rip it up and start again. Loving the act of making these often shows on the work – particularly in the very spare pieces on just lines and marks.

Artist Statement:
The “Disasters Aftermaths” pieces came out my correspondence with an artist/writer friend of mine (I’m one of his editors), and our discussions of stories and how to tell them. I wanted to try working in a whole new way – messy, layered, more thought out – with a story in mind as I worked. Unfortunately (or fortunately), when I started these, much was happening around me that affected me personally– storms, tornados, fire, war – and so those are the stories these tell, of the aftermaths, of the survivors.

I work varyingly both ways – the “…Aftermath” series will alternate with the pure abstract work, depending on my headspace.