Sarah Esme Harrison

Sarah Esme Harrison (b. 1990, New York, New York) lives and works in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York. She graduated from The Yale School of Art with an MFA in Painting in 2017.  Both working in and subverting the tradition of plein air landscape painting, her works ask us to interrogate who is looking, and from what perspective. Beginning her paintings outdoors, she makes observational responses to her surroundings. She then moves the paintings into the studio, where she sees them as distinctly human-made, rather than as a piece of the natural world, as it appears while working outside. Building wedge shaped supports for the painted panels, she exaggerates that they are un-natural, their shape prompting viewers to move around them in an exploratory way. The second layer of her paintings, completed in the studio, takes the form of a gate, a symbol of duality. To invite a close look, they adorn and echo, but at the same time, they keep the viewer out. Conventions of beauty tell us to look, and then they distort what we see. These imposing tangles of wrought iron often take a floriate form, blending with the garden, all the while standing in opposition. Harrison’s paintings point to our imperfect love for nature, which is possessive, extractive, and violent.