SARAH BIRD
"I want to someday arrive at a place of perfect artistic synchronicity. I want to open the vein of creativity where my work flows forth with little struggle. I've been told that no one ever really gets there, but I have to believe in that dream in order to move forward." On the Cover: Untitled, Oil on Panel, 16”x20”
"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself." This was said by Miles Davis and he was talking about making music, though artists working within any medium understand the struggle of developing a unique voice. After gaining fluency in the language of light and form a painter is faced with what is perhaps the even more imposing task of choosing what to say. A current exhibition of paintings by Sarah Bird reveals one artist's fascinating answer to this question. Bird's paintings reconcile the classical and contemporary in a way that feels like something entirely new and timeless. The roots of this vision are perhaps found in a childhood spent in Concord, Massachusetts. "The town itself is a museum of New England history and the transcendentalist thinkers who had so much influence on the culture. The leaders of that movement were the radical freethinkers of their time, so Concord feels like a kind of shrine to a preserved radicality. So much of New England culture gestures towards Europe- even the landscape itself- but there was something new in the approach to nature of people like Emerson and Thoreau. They tried to see and depict nature clearly and without ego."
Saltwater Crocodile Skull, 56 x 71.4cm
Untitled, Oil on Panel, 12”x16”
Untitled, Oil on Panel, 20”x24”
"Painting form is not just about painting the form itself but is also about painting the space around the form, the space between the objects and the space between yourself and those objects. The depiction of air is a beautiful illusion."
Bird arrived at the GCA's midtown Manhattan location in the Autumn of 2010. "I originally wanted to be a landscape painter and paint spaces that felt accessible as opposed to flat. I was as fascinated with the illusion of space itself as I was with depicting the forms within that space and landscape painting lent itself to that. The air between objects and the air between yourself and those objects." As a student Bird learned still life painting under the tutelage of teachers that included Tony Curanaj and Ted Minoff and at an early stage realized that the still life genre could serve to express some of those same experiences. Bird's concept evolved over years and her current paintings are a culmination of her revelation- a recapitulation of the traditional landscape transposed to still life.
For Bird, simply depicting form in a natural and believable way isn't enough. "I want to capture the human experience and the biocular quality that a painting can convey, between an accurate portrayal of nature and a human conception." This focus on the conceptual is a product of a unique process that is somewhat of a departure from the conventional approach to academic still life painting. Bird paints each object from life separately and never sees the composition entirely until she has assembled them on the canvas. The overall picture that emerges is intentionally lacking in global unity while each individual form retains a naturalist integrity that produces an experience of multiplicity that is both convincing and revealing. "The sense of faultiness itself is important to me because these are not real worlds and my hand in the arrangement is clear. These are artificial and entirely human conceptions. By putting hothouse flowers next to plants from my backyard, even the variety of plants isn't ecologically sound." Bird creates distance between the objects that imbues each with a stand alone quality reminiscent of relics laid upon an altar that has no narrative. "I'm driven by the aesthetics of the objects more than their qualities. The narrative that I'm expressing is my personal sensibility."
Each painting depicts a self contained space while evincing an entire world and reflects the influence of the early northern European renaissance. "In painting's like St. Francis in the Desert by Giovanni Bellini we see the real and the imagined. Each object is carefully and separately observed while the greater composition is imaginary. The picture becomes believable only to a certain extent and reveals the experience of the mind's eye as opposed to what we merely see. When we look at any object we can only focus on one detail at a time but when we compose a painting we can create an experience of multiplicity."
Untitled, Oil on Panel, 20”x24”
Untitled, Oil on Panel, 24”x36”
Theogony, 106.6 x 83.6 cm
While Bird's process is informed by years of academic study, it's also enormously intuitive and empathetic."I build paintings that derive their strength from not knowing where the painting is going as I'm painting it. I've never been able to pre-conceive a picture. The act of painting itself, of moving my brush across the canvas, is what informs my decisions as much as anything else. It's a symbiotic process. If I have a philosophy, empathy is at the heart of it and the act of form painting is a kind of empathetic process in which we meditate on the objects that we're painting in order to understand their nature. I want to understand what unifies everything as opposed to dividing it. I'm trying to present an entire world as opposed to a particular view or perspective of that world."
Bird's method of compositional design is somewhat similar to the approach that contemporary abstract painters use to compose pictures in that she is primarily focused on pure aesthetics but she still considers the essential qualities of each object such as weight and volume as well as the inherent qualities of strength and fragility. "I don't put barriers between myself and different genres of painting and I never have. I don't always love the work that I see but I always love the act of looking. I'm an image addict. I appreciate all kinds of painting, but what I elected for my own process is based on what I know to be true to my own nature and the limitations of my imagination."" Katie Whipple, an accomplished floral painter and teacher has witnessed Bird's evolution ever since they were classmates at the GCA and has been enthralled by her journey. "She has a beautiful way of existing in the world and it's reflected in her work. The paintings are believable and yet they are worlds that can't exist in this world. Her paintings lack narratives but are narratives of themselves. It's something like magical realism but more real."
Text by: Michael Fetherston
Tiny Fruits: A series of oil paintings by Sarah Bird Art Center East 1006 Penn Avenue La Grande, OR 97850 February 4 through March 26