Artist's Biography
Sarah Gutwirth received her BFA and BA in painting in 1978 from a joint program of Reed College and the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland OR. Her MFA in painting is from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1985. In 2017 she was nominated for the prestigious Joan Mitchell Prize for Painting. She has received grants from Kentucky Arts Council, Kentucky Foundation for Women, Murray State University and United University Professions at SUNY. She has had 20 one and two person exhibits over the last thirty-one years and has had work in numerous group shows. Her work is in several collections, including the People’s Education Press in Beijing. She held three tenure track teaching positions, receiving tenure at two. She retired in 2017 as Full Professor of Painting Emerita at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. She has travelled widely and lived in France. In 2017 she moved to Philadelphia where she was born and raised.
Artist's Statement
I am currently revisiting an idea I have had for a long time concerning the way forms in nature are incorporated into human-made objects, both in paintings and in decorative objects (this is an insight early collectors revealed in their cabinets). I call these works 'Correspondences', and while they are based on visual overlap, I like the way they play with different levels of representation and seem to create new narrative spaces and visual reverberations. This layering of representation connects them back to my Meta Painting series from 2012-15, as does the explicit borrowing from historical painting.
This body of work also relates to my interest in collection, as the images are drawn from my own collection of details of works I have seen and photos I have taken in museums and out in the world. I am combining representations of things from nature, things from decorative arts and things from fine art images, to show how there is overlap between these languages of representation. My work over the last five years in Taxonomies and Collections, organizes imagery and content around themes of collecting and categorizing the natural world based on a networks or webs of connection. My new work riffs on the internal conversation between objects and images within these collections in a slightly different vein. Instead of categorizing things based on their meaning, it categorizes based on a more primitive taxonomy of visual likeness or relationship. This recalls some of the earliest taxonomies of pre-modern science, where things are alike if they appear alike. In these paintings the meaning is less specific to category, more allusive and intuitive, seeking correspondences arising out of rhythms of color, light and line.
This recent work is something of a departure while retaining a deep congruity. It seeks to reframe our way of representing and interpreting the world through our sensuous and intellectual understanding of its form: a different taxonomy.
Artist's Bibliography
2015
Studio Visit Magazine, OpenStudios Press, Boston, MA
Juried Publication
Professional Experience
1999 - 2017
Professor of Painting, Murray State University, Murray, KY
2003
Instructor, Kentucky Institute for International Studies, Italy program
2002
Instructor, Kentucky Institute for International Studies, Italy program
2002 - 2007
Associate Professor of Painting, Murray State University, Murray, KY
1999 - 2002
Assistant Professor of Painting, Murray State University, Murray, KY
Awards & Honors
2017
Nominated for Joan Mitchell Award in Painting and Sculpture, Joan Mitchell Foundation
2004
CISR Research Grant, Murray State University, Murray, KY
2002
Individual Artist’s Grant, Kentucky Foundation for Women
2000
Professional Development Fellowship, Kentucky State Arts Council
Individual Artist’s Grant, Kentucky Foundation for Women
Collections
People’s Education Press, Beijing, China
Gainesville College, Gainesville GA
Richard Brush Gallery, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY
Roland Gibson Gallery, Potsdam College, SUNY, Potsdam, NY
Private Collection, Mark Sloan and Michelle Van Parys, College of Charleston
Lectures, Workshops, & Papers Presented
2008
Lecture, Western Kentucky State University, Bowling Green, KY
2003
Panel Discussion (Women in Art) Brescia University, Owensboro, KY
2002
Gallery Talk, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA
2001
Recorded Juror’s Lecture, Henderson Art Guild, Henderson, KY
The Poetry of Eavan Boland, Jesse Stuart Symposium Composition Workshop, Murray Art Guild, Murray, KY
Education
1985
Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
MFA, Painting
1978
Museum Art School, Portland, OR
BFA
Reed College, Portland, OR
BA, Joint degree program with Museum Art School
