Mother, 18" x 18"

Oil on Wood Panel, 18 x 18 inches.

"The painting is built and cut away in layers with spots of underpainting breaking through as organic texture. This piece is a sombre narrative. A typical Pacific Northwest landscape from my childhood, which includes the figure of my mother in her youth, obscured from view as she walks down a blustery, cool autumn sidewalk. Snowflakes are in the breeze, and the weather is coming.

My work explores memory and change through imagery and the physical act of painting. The surface aggressively develops, pulling at threads of setting, figure and narrative gleaned from family photographs. It ages. The painted surface is aggressively worked in layers of added color only to be scraped away to abstractly reveal painting action from below, obliterating what was present. Fresh mark-making, born anew."  

Sarah Dillon is originally from Yakima, WA, and now based in Lake Tapps, WA. She received her MFA in painting from Boston University in 2004. Noted exhibitions include Gallery XIV in Boston, which was featured in The Wall Street Journal, Artscope Magazine, MSNBC, Imagine Arts, and Boston Globe. Sarah has exhibited work at the Washington State Convention Center, Blackfish Gallery, Portland, OR, Gallery 110, Seattle, WA, Brooklyn Art Library, NY, Western Bridge Gallery, Seattle, WA, Oxbow Gallery, Northampton, MA, Untitled Space Gallery, NY, Center on Contemporary and Political Art, DC, and Cave Gallery, Vancouver, WA to name a few. Sarah has created commissioned work for the Pike Place Market Foundation and is included in private collections around the country.