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The majority of Sarah Chase’s paintings focus on the beauty and sensuality of two subject matters: the human body and botanical forms. The human form, in particular, allows her immense artistic freedom in the manipulation of both technical composition and emotional content. Merging hyperrealism with expressionistic freedom, she endeavors to reveal emotional truth.
Her process consists of three equally important components: photography; psychological exploration; and painting. The final outcome is “the most psychologically truthful because it combines the physical features of the model with his/her emotional state and allows both to be viewed simultaneously on a visual plane. Painting as a medium is extremely conducive to this concept because it allows an artist to manipulate the image from start to finish.” The final painted image is a visually combined portrait of the subject and artist, which in many ways serves as a rorschach test to its viewers: the “meaning is interpreted on an individual basis as a result of the unique past experiences and psychology that each viewer brings to it.”
Originally from California, Sarah Chase has made her home in Miami, a city she finds to have “an undeniably intense creative energy that is uniquely stimulating for artistic creation”.
Artist Statement
“In the Dark”
The word “impulse” is defined as “the force or energy associated with a moving body.” This series of eight “impulses” was conceptualized as a way to capture these fleeting movements in a single frame, just as a strobe light can capture one second of movement in an otherwise black room, the visual moment lingering in the mind after it has past until the next strobe illuminates the body’s new position.
Sometimes a single moment in time captured visually can more accurately epitomize a psyche or a mood than continuous motion. My work is mostly concerned with the attempt to capture the psychological truth of a moment and allow it to be viewed on the permanent, visual plane that a two-dimensional canvas provides. Painting as a medium allows me the freedom to manipulate the image (both the figure and the environment) from start to finish, transcending purely physical representation to reveal emotional truth.
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