Sara Ciampa: Natura

Natura

Sarah Ciampa

Corrine Woodman Gallery

October 4 – November 12, 2022

Reception: Thursday October 20, 2022

5:30 – 7:00 PM

Art for Lunch (virtual only)

The “Natura” exhibit by Sarah Ciampa is a body of work that examines our human relationship with the natural world and the way we interact with nature physically, psychologically, and emotionally.

We often attempt to capture what can’t be captured when experiencing the natural world and the artist bringing natural objects to the studio to paint them reflects this attempt to grasp what is ungraspable through a series of reflective and contemplative images. The work was created from 2020 – 2021 and although it does not explicitly reference the pandemic, the work has a quality of solace and examination from the artist’s time spent in reflection upon the constant possible investigations we can find in nature and our experience of it, even in—or perhaps especially in—times of tumult.

These carefully crafted still life paintings are extremely detailed renderings of natural objects painted from live observation of each item and scene, generally using a cool and soft palette. Each subject is rendered with specificity and an almost portrait-like quality in the classical realist style. The paintings are poetic meditations on the forms and functions of the natural world that we so often take for granted but that can provide peace, quietude and re-centering in contemplation. To reflect on nature is to experience something greater than our selves or our human-made world.

Our experience of nature is life, death, solace, fear, plenty, famine, order, chaos, and above all, something that goes on with and without us.