SARA CARTER

The depths

November 13, 2021 - January 1, 2022

de boer is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Sara Carter, its first solo with the artist. The paintings are comprised of spontaneously layered gestural paint on heavy linen canvas, and represent a sustained and sensuous body of work. The paintings pose questions about how we distinguish between action and reflection.

Over the last 30 years, Carter has steadily produced several bodies of painting distinctive and exceptional in the use of color and openness present. Together the typologies have served as a laboratory in which Carter experiments with freedom, control, and the fixing of an image. Carter is also interested in human emotions; tragedy, ecstasy, indecision, and communication in efforts to plumb the depths of herself and the human condition.

Carter’s work is luminous and illusionistic yet bracingly sculptural and physical. Achieved by a masterful mixture of oversized and small brushes, Carter builds the foreground as a destination for shapes in a combination of colors. Spontaneous action is preceded by essential extended periods of observation. This is a time for Carter when the next maneuver is deeply considered. The emerging composition is often interrupted with brushstrokes and gestural movements, creating mystery and prompting questions about its construction.

Sara Carter is a Houston-born abstract painter based in Austin, Texas. Carter studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the early 1990s and remained in the Bay Area until 2017, when she returned to Austin. Carter sees the works as embodiments of her psychic state, emitting a ‘frequency’ that induces an energy vibration in sympathetic, attuned viewers.

Sara Carter’s paintings have been exhibited at de boer, Los Angeles, CA; Nancy Littlejohn Fine Art, Houston, TX; Edward Cella, Los Angeles, CA; di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, CA; Octavia Art Gallery, Houston, TX and New Orleans, LA; Graystone Gallery, San Francisco, CA; the Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, CA; Aureus Contemporary, USA; Octavia Gallery, Bath, United Kingdom. They have been acquired by di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art; Black Stone Minerals Company, Houston, TX; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Commack Expansion, Commack, NY; and many other public, corporate, and private collections.

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