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Sarah Peters
Appeal to
Heaven
September 9 – October 9,
2010
Opening: Thursday, September 9,
2010
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present "Appeal to Heaven," our second
solo exhibition by New York artist Sarah Peters. Featuring a suite of new drawings
(the “Mayflower” series) and the first of a series of new bronze
busts ("Descendants and Believers"), "Appeal to Heaven" represents a
continuation of Peters' in-depth exploration of the ideals and motifs of early
American art and colonial history as viewed from our 21st Century vantage point.
Combined with her highly stylized landscapes, her portraits of the fervent
idealists and puritan visionaries who risked everything to come here from Europe
and their ideological heirs reveal not only a lost romanticism, but, in her
words, “the chaos of initial human convictions and beliefs as tempered by
time and
experience.”
The drawings presented from the “Mayflower” series, each created in
Peters’ signature aggressive cross-hatching and inky layering technique,
include seven turbulent seascapes and a single portrait. The seascapes are
titled with dates, beginning with “Sept 6, 1620” (the day the
Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England) and ending on
“November 9, 1962” (the day America was first sighted from the
ship). Occasionally appearing among the magnificent yet terrifying waves in
these scenes are what appear to be hallucinations of people or spirits bobbing
in the open
seas.
The single portrait is an imagined likeness of Dorothy May Bradford, wife of
William Bradford who in addition to being one of the first colony's earliest
governors would also leave the best-known written account of the settling of
Plymouth, Massachusetts. Dorothy is unfortunately renowned for being the first
of those who survived the sea journey to die in the “New World.”
Today there are those who insist she accidentally fell from the Mayflower into
the freezing waters of Provincetown Harbor and other who believe she
intentionally jumped to her death. As such she epitomizes the tragic fate of
Peters' central characters (the cast of true believers who follow their
convictions, come what may) as well as the internal and external manifestations
of the turmoil of
belief.
The progression of sculptural technique and stylization represented via the six
bronze busts from Peters’ “Descendants and Believers” series
reflects the increasing sophistication achieved by early American artists
through the centuries (a reconnection with European sensibilities over time,
perhaps), even as the subjects’ shared emotional turbulence suggests a
persistance of the belief tinged with longing and suffering that defined many of
the earliest Puritans and continues up through those caught up in contemporary
messianic cults. From her clunky but somehow still compellingly rendered
portrayals of sexually ambiguous characters to her exquisitely sculpted
saint-like young man (with a marvelous head of curls and a gently twisting
neck), Peters' virtuostic spectrum parallels the artistic progress in early
American
art.
Sarah Peters received her BFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996
and her MFA from the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003. She has been
awarded multiple residences, including recently, The Fine Arts Work Center,
Artist in Residency, in Provincetown, MA; the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Grant,
in New York; and the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry, Artist in Residency, in
Kohler, WI. Her recent exhibitions have included show at artSTRAND Gallery,
Provincetown, MA; The Front, New Orleans, LA; Provincetown Art Association and
Museum, Provincetown, MA; and the Morris Museum of Art, Morristown, New
Jersey.
For more information, please contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or
info@winkleman.com.
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