Sarah Frantz
Safety in the Shade

June 6 , 2020 – June 28, 2020

Recently I sat in my studio staring at the night sky through an open doorway feeling my hope thwarted by malign stars. While listening to a beautifully written audiobook about grievous acts, I considered how technology simultaneously extends and amputates my senses – fragmenting experiences. I thought about female abstract painters and about making analog versions of digitally inspired paintings. I felt some optimism to return.

Out of time and dislocated from the original space, my latest series of paintings explore the false barriers that create more imagined than real distance between two points of view. Composed from the perspective of being inside a cave, the viewer looks up or out to the sky, unable to touch what the stars may bring. Scenes of hope and want, but also powerlessness, depicted in flat color and faux digital paint marks. Alien and grand in their bareness, the result is an attempt to balance restraint with excess, or at least to temper the anxious over- embellishment with order.

–Sarah Frantz

Originally from suburban Chicago, Sara Frantz earned her BS from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a MFA in Painting from the University of Texas at Austin. Represented by the David Shelton Gallery in Houston, her work has been included in internationally recognized art fairs, national solo and group exhibitions. In addition, she has attended various artist residencies including Cow House Studios in Ireland, Vermont Studio Center, and NES Residency in Iceland. Frantz currently splits her time between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo where she is an associate professor of studio art.