Artist's Biography

Sarah Cromarty's painting practice involves acts of re-appropriation, defacement and recreation. The foundations of her work are landscape prints that undergo transformations via the artist's hand such as remounting, cutting, scraping, gluing, collage, varnishing,and painting. Through such interventions the paintings go through a dramatic recreation, one that displaces traditional notions of figure/ground relationships, the authentic and the copy, as well as painting and sculpture. By playing with these formal codes, Cromarty is akin to other contemporary painters such as Peter Doig, Michael Raedecker or Dexter Dalwood as she opens up a visual place in painting that obeys the rules of an "imaginative space".

Cromarty's work is painstakingly produced with a sensibility that does not shy away from the painterly virtuosity that makes for special effects of surface qualities. Her psychologically charged paintings continue to challenge and compel viewers in ways that are strange, striking, and beautiful. Doug Harvey of the LAWeekly writes, "Cromarty trawls the thrift stores for uplifting scenic posters—rainbows, hot-air balloons, fireworks—for use in her sweetly sinister paintings. Growing out of earlier bodies of work that made somewhat more clinical modifications to thrift-store paintings and the covers of nature books, her double-glazed confections somehow combine the irresistible sublime of Caspar David Friedrich with the unhinged Hallmark sentiment of "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy.""

She lives and works in Los Angeles and is represented by Circus Gallery, Los Angeles.

View additional work here.

Curator's Biography

John Knuth's art has been a continual examination of natural death, decay, and metamorphosis. In the past he has made use of a number different insects. In addition to his studio practice, John Knuth is the director of the Circus of Books Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Knuth received his MFA from The University of Southern California in 2005. He has recently exhibited at Dan Hug Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and Southern Exposure in San Francisco, CA. He lives and works in Los Angeles.