Sarah Esme Harrison

Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA

Artist statement

My work explores the concept of faith, and in particular the idea that the familiar world is a scrim or veil and that there may be another world behind, intermingled, or hidden within the one we know. I begin my “gate paintings” on site by working from life, en plein air. After painting outside, I bring the panel back into my studio where I add an imagined “gate” into the painting. The gate transforms the landscape into a cloister or threshold. Using wedge shaped panels turns the paintings into almost-sculptures, so they push back on categorization and become more like sites than images. The rugs and tapestries are physical records of a meditative process. I include the mirror / portal as a compositional counterpoint, and as a way of exploring the insights that come with meditation—to me, those thoughts are otherworldly and impossible to anticipate. Recently, I began making collages out of playing cards after taking a road trip across the United States and seeing dozens of casinos. Although the cards are worthless, they suggest wealth, and touched by unknown hands, they become like a worn-down statue of a saint, embedded with ideas about fate, hope, and sudden reversals of fortune. Landscapes, textiles and playing cards are not typically associated with mysticism. I’m interested in topics that don’t announce themselves as portals or liminal places because the spiritual experience is linked to the act of perception and not to the identity or status of any particular subject.

Artwork