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Long before Sandy Straus visited Ireland for the first time two years ago, she had been exploring her own gardens that slope amid sunlit glades surrounding her summer house in the Hudson Valley. A devotee of nature she was reflecting upon the wondrous plants and her own art. Specifically, she wanted to remove the painterly vulnerability from flowers that usually embeds them in realistic imagery. She was on a search for an abstract view.
Awarded an artist residency in County Kerry, Ireland, she quickly discovered luscious clusters of wild, tangled vines deep in the raw forest. It brought her imagination to full bloom.
The art colony, known as Cill Rialig Project, is located in what was an abandoned prefamine village above the Atlantic Ocean. Here she wandered for hours focusing her keen eye and camera on flowers and foliage of vibrant bright colors which opens her new work to a grove of abstraction.
Inspired by the twisting, curving shape of fuchsia bushes and vines, she moves effortlessly into an intelligent, controlled abstraction of opulent painterliness. Based on reality, her sensorial experience seizes upon a collision of stimulating color that represents a subconscious record of intensified expression.
Among fifteen solo shows Sandy Straus has exhibited at P.S.1 and the A.I.R. Gallery in New York and the Smart Museum in Chicago. Group shows include Documenta in Kassel, Germany; Mass Moca in North Adams, Mass; and the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil.
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