BRIGHT SHADES | Sarah Bird

OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION FRIDAY, AUG 8TH 5:00-7:30 PM Influenced by Georgia O’Keeffe and the Dutch realist painters, Sarah Bird creates intimate worlds that occasionally tip into the surreal. With her latest exhibition, Bright Shades, Bird explores the idea of parental love-- its talismanic quality and real-world limitations. She examines how the human psyche reconciles feelings of security & vulnerability both as a parent and in relation to Mother Nature. Inspired by traditional still-life and landscape genres, Bird’s oil paintings are personal and filled with everyday objects like rocks, shells, stickers even watermelon rinds. For Bird, “Painting is about the human mind and what our attention reveals about our character and our values.” She adds, “I like a painting that doesn’t stay in the bounds of realism like Morris Graves, Gertrude Abercrombie, Leonora Carrington, Frida Kahlo, and the exquisite painting and strange configurations that come from old masters like Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, and Francisco de Zurbaran.”