* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Sarah Zar was born in Rochester, NY. She received her BFA from the University at Albany, studied abroad at the Ontario College of Art and Design, then earned her MFA from Montclair State University in 2010. Zar has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad including shows at Denise Bibro Fine Art/ Platform Gallery in NYC, the Chautauqua Institution, and Afterhours Projects in Toronto, Ontario, where she presented her recent body of work, Nomads on the Shore. Sarah Zar lives and paints in Brooklyn, NY.
Sarah explains her work by saying, “I draw on oil painting, sculpture and installation to create postmodern narratives that mingle external and interior realities. My paintings, often executed in low-lit, moody colors, are filled with bizarre figures, interacting or inhabiting solitary scenes with other unnatural presences, absences, and transpositions. I paint on old book pages and smooth sanded wood remnants, preferring the polished texture of things with lost histories. My intimately sized oil paint compositions often refer to disturbing and deceptive content, and lend themselves to ambiguous interpretation. Surrounded by collaged wooden frames, these works are often figurative and a bit fabulist. For me, painting is a way of thinking through sight, and I am inspired by the indirect histories I find in literature and libraries. Object making is my way of rescuing short poems from permanent invisibility.”