Gregory J. Peterson
writes:
Sarah McEneaney is
unique among Realist painters. Although she has a formal art school
background, her work has an "outsider" quality. Her vibrant
colors can have a raw edge to them and there's a prickly quality to
her line. She may be reminiscent of Grandma Moses, Horace Pippin and
Red Grooms in the aspects of her work that portray a naïve benevolence
of spirit but occasional chaos. Yet she works in a medium, egg tempera
on panel, that is monstrously difficult to master. However, what makes
Sarah so singular as an artist is her subject matter. She paints scenes
from her day to day life in all its ordinariness, its triumphs, mysteries
and horrors. It appears she records all the minutiae of her existence,
and with her razor sharp artist's eye hones in on pulse of the human
condition.
Sarah McEneaney NJT
10/01 2002, egg tempera on wood, 24 x 30 inches, this and other
images courtesy Schlesinger
I first encountered her work several
years ago at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (of which she
is a graduate), where a small piece of hers, Son, Brother, Lover,
Friend, was exhibited. Although only about the size of an old LP jacket,
the profoundly touching sentiments expressed in that picture are enormous.
The artist, a white woman, seen from behind, comforts an emaciated
young black man who is apparently, no definitely, dying of AIDS. Alone
with him in his hospital room she touches his hand and speaks to him
tenderly at his bedside. Since seeing that picture I have followed
McEneaney's career closely. She has quite a following in Philly and
her works are exhibited regularly there where she is represented by
the More Gallery. Then last year she broke through to the New York
market for the first time in a solo show at Gallery Schlesinger on
the Upper East Side. That show included another image, equally gripping
though not at all comforting, entitled Revenge Fantasy. In this picture,
which was inspired by a rape experience, Sarah is seen emerging from
a swimming pool while a drowned man sinks to the bottom.
The power of Mc Eneaney's imagery
comes in large part from a sense of integrity her work conveys. Her
strait forward and unvarnished (both literally and figuratively) tableaus
have a feeling of simplicity and ordinariness that ring of truth.
With McEneaney, a walk in the park is just a walk in the park. A street
corner is just a street corner with the trash in the empty lot and
a crack in a wall there for all to see. When she tells you through
her paintings what she did that day, her life comes alive in all its
modest everyday detail. But everyone's life has its moments of glory
and of gloom, and when the extraordinary happens in Sarah's world
it is all the more fascinating because you know it's real.
Sarah McEneaney Miracle
Painting 2002, egg tempera on wood, 24 x 36 inches
Currently McEneaney has her second
one person show at Gallery Schlesinger. I would strongly advise a
visit. You will see the Miracle Painting, in which she cross-country
skis with her sister in a blizzard, with every snowflake individually
painted. The "miracle" is that she finds a car part that
fell off her vehicle some days before. The large, minutely painted
F & D Summer Garden, shows a community garden in Sarah's neighborhood
abutting a wall painting Sarah was commissioned to paint there, a
painting within a painting. Flattery is a glamorized self-portrait
of the artist with uncharacteristic glossy red lips and an anatomically
incorrect swan-length neck. You will also see Sarah asleep out on
her bed while her two cats revel in her company in Mango Dream. However
the one image from Sarah's visual diary which I cannot erase, as much
as I may want to, is NJT 10-1. Sarah rides a commuter train gazing
out the window. Her face can hardly be seen, but her body language
tells you something disquieting has happened. Slowly you understand
that she is traversing the New Jersey Meadowlands, and she sees beyond
the Hudson for the first time the New York skyline having lost its
twin towers.
Gregory Peterson is a New York corporate lawyer who
collects and lectures about contemporary realist painting.
What
do you think?
[When mailing comments for publication, please state artist and venue
in subject line]