LAUREN P. DELLA MONICA
Making Her Mark
In this excerpt from the Exhibition Catalog for Mattatuck Museum's 2016 show Making Her Mark, curator Lauren P. Della Monica discusses Sarah's work. The exhibition featured six female contemporary artists: Sarah Hinckley, Laurie Simmons, Claudia Demonte, Hayv Kahraman, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Lisa Ruyter.
Another strong colorist, Sarah Hinckley's abstract paintings are vivid expressions of the artist's emotional mind when exposed to light as well as references to the natural world that serves as her inspiration. The paintings provide a place of contemplation and express themselves through color. Light and environment play a strong foundational role in Hinckley's work. Often inspired by her early life on the seashore of Cape Cod where she was surrounded by flat beaches, serene horizons of sea and sky, salt marshes edging into the sea, and light glinting off the water even on the coldest days, Hinckley filters the world around her, even after years living and working in Manhattan, through the window of this formal, structural view.
In my heart knows what my mind won't say abstract bands of subtle color stretch horizontally across the canvas. Biomorphic, plant-like shapes referencing nature extend across these bands of color adding elements as in a textile. Layer upon layer of paint is visible at the sides of the canvas, most colors of which are now hidden on the surface of the canvas. These invisible layers create depth and texture in the final surface of Hinckley's work, their level of exposure or obscurity creating a quiet materiality to the work and a glow of underlying tone. The tactility of the surfaces comes from the various methods of application of paint to canvases, a mixture of smoothly painted and rough, bare areas of the canvas, aqueous paint dribbled in places and slickly applies to smooth edges in others, varying degrees of the weight of the material itself hanging together within structural bands of color.
The large work creates an environment that envelops the viewer, providing a safe place to stop and contemplate the suggested mood of quiet prescience.
Working flat on a table, then hanging the work and looking at it for a time, allowing some time to make decisions about changing a form or color, perhaps adding another layer, Hinckley works on more than painting at a time. When she arrives at the studio each day, Hinckley often begins her practice with watercolors, which allow for an immediate composition, color choices limited to just a few giving the wet medium, and allow her hand to begin the motion of paintings. Often these watercolors inspire changes in the oil paintings in progress, hanging on the walls of the studio.
Hinckley grapples with scale as a minimalist painter, adjusting the bands of color and shapes revealed within to achieve an overall rhythm and harmony.
The grouping of smaller works tells another story, their layers revealing their evolution. Each individual piece holds together with Hinckley's formal choices of bands of paint containing references to plant life, crescents evocative of suns and moons, painted in a lyrical style. The titles of the works reveal an inward focus, a personal reflection, using words like "you", "me" ,
"I" and "my", which puts the viewer in the intimate space of the artist at that moment, sharing a personal secret. A variety of brushwork and selective layering of paint creates colorful, evocative, and in many instances playful compositions. The colors work independently within every painting, each with its own voice. The emotion conveyed by the artist and understood by the viewer is a reflection of the intensity and boldness of the colors, using color as content.
Taken together, the grouping of works serves as a chorus, providing diversity of sentiment like reading individual faces in a crowd. The same may be said the work of these six extraordinary artist, each of whom has made her mark.
-- Lauren P. Della Monica
Lauren P. Della Monica is a New York based art consultant and founder of LPDM Fine Art.
Catalog text copyright Lauren P. Dell a Monica; exhibition photo courtesy of Mattatuck Museum.