Sarah McEneaney: Porch Life

Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present Sarah McEneaney: Porch Life, an exhibition of paintings from the last three years. The works in the current exhibition cover many of the areas McEneaney has explored over the last several decades. She continues her project of documenting her life and surroundings through self-portraits, interiors, cityscapes, and landscapes. The title Porch Life references both a literal porch and a stand-in for her studio, emphasizing the observational nature of this recent series—looking out and taking it in from an open-air studio. The artist is an avid traveler, and many paintings stem from a recent summer tour of Rhode Island and Maine. Another painting offers a porch view of her new home in New Jersey. Having attended many artist residencies throughout the world, she now maintains a second home and studio in rural South Jersey, which she describes as her "permanent residency." The city of Philadelphia, where McEneaney has lived and worked since leaving art school in 1979, remains a constant subject. The exhibition includes a large painting of a local dog park, Winter Street Dog Park. The artist is an active community member, deeply involved in local development and community projects in the Callowhill neighborhood of Philadelphia. McEneaney has long created paintings focused on iteration and pattern—both central aspects of her image-making. There is the iteration of subjects: her pets, studio views, self-portraits, and neighborhood locales. Patterning is a visual strategy the artist relishes; she articulates large areas of her compositions with shelves of books, brick walls, grass, and foliage. Through this technique, she builds up the picture surface and contrasts intricate detail with wide planes of saturated color. McEneaney also employs iteration by incorporating paintings within paintings, which appear in process on her studio walls and as finished works hanging in interior scenes. Throughout the work, there is a constant intake of the outside world, filtered and circulated through McEneaney's distinct visual universe.