Untitled Reflection, pigments on raw canvas, 2014
Canadian born Saira McLarne offers her viewers colorfully gestural brushstrokes which invite minds to visit a serene state of angelic nostalgia. Simultaneous to her dripping memoirs, McLarne’s multi-faceted sculptures make for an enticing complimentary contrast which pulls on heartstrings while turning the mind to an alternate shade of remembrance.
Untitled, glazed porcelain with gold lustere, 2014
In her new body of work, McLaren references opposition and nature; the world around us and an internal realm. The title, a day and the night, is both specific and vague, alluding to contrasting ideas that exist simultaneously. While McLaren’s paintings suggests the natural world with reflective surfaces, solar discs and arboreal shapes, we are never entirely sure of our place in this ever-changing surface. McLaren’s paintings are a multi layering process, usually involving 10-30 layers. Beginning with thin layers of acrylic dye on raw canvas, she works her way to thicker applications. Raw pigment with acrylic binders are introduced in the final stages, applied with a heavier hand to create more depth and surface. The use of resist methods in the middle layers creates a ‘ghosting’ effect, or bleached appearance, though she does not use bleach. Though the painting is made in a long process, the paint is applied very quickly and each time she add to the work there can be no hesitation. The effect these layers produce is to envelop as well as separate us– we are in the woods and viewing them from afar. The dye is at once very clear and smudged, allowing our eyes to focus or blur as we move through the work. To read the full press release go HERE
The show opens on Thursday January 8th, 2015 and will be on view until February 8th, 2015:
@Sargent’s Daughters
179 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002
To know more about Sargent’s Daughters go: HERE
To see more of Saira McLaren’s work visit: HERE
