Sarah Dillon

BIO

Sarah Dillon is originally from Yakima, 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.  

Press about Sarah’s work in solo exhibitions has been included in The Seattle Weekly, The Stranger, Yakima Herald Republic, The Seattle Times, Winter Tangerine Review and Studio Visit Magazine. Her work has been exhibited in museums and university galleries all over the US including The Georgia College and State University Museum, Tarrant County College in Texas, Boston University, Rogue Community College in Oregon, Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University, Annmarie Sculpture Garden, MD, Cascadia College in WA among others. Sarah is currently tenured Studio Art Faculty and Gallery Director at Green River College. She lives in Lake Tapps, WA with her husband and two daughters.

ARTIST STATEMENT

"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. 

The figure comes in and out as fragmented, abstracted form, sometimes clearly in narrative focus and sometimes remanence of color, shape, form, texture responding to broken memory more conceptually. Seasonal change, sense of place and storytelling is deep-set within this series. The places I return to in my memories, the places from my memories that I take my own children to experience and the things I think I have forgotten, coming back to me in bits and flashes, ultimately exploring what it is to be where I am and how I got here. I encourage self-reflection in life around us in an effort to define or question our truth."