Locks Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Sarah McCoubrey. Sarah McCoubrey: Fate and Transport will be on view December 7, 2012 through January 11, 2013. There will be a reception for the artist Friday, December 7, 2012 from 5:30–7:30 pm.
Fate and Transport marks an important departure for McCoubrey, a dramatic and fervent response to her time spent observing industrial waste beds and land that has been subjected to hydrofracking on the east coast. Struck by what she calls, "a landscape on life support," McCoubrey was compelled to move beyond her observations of landscape and instead deliver a fantastical means of escape, stemming from her sculptural and photographic studies of potatoes. McCoubrey's vehicles are the earthbound made aerial, the humble turned savior, technology that is grown rather than built. They are meant to rescue us from a dystopian future, where man has damaged the world beyond repair.
McCoubrey's delicate hand and the luminous quality of her landscapes speak to her profound understanding, honed over decades, of the paintings of Dutch masters such as Jacob van Ruisdael. Her figures were composed while looking to the inventive works of Hieronymus Bosch, particularly Ship of Fools (1490–1500). Much as Bosch used his ship to expose the follies of his society, McCoubrey's vehicles are an admonition, fueled not only by the desire to escape, but to restore.
The artist's paintings will be shown in the exhibit, The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (November 17, 2012 – April 7, 2013). McCoubrey's work will also be featured in solo exhibitions at the Clifford Gallery at Colgate University in February 2013 and at the Everson Museum of Art in 2014.
McCoubrey received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and has taught at Syracuse University since 1991. She is the recipient of several grants, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, a Milton Avery Foundation Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a New York State Council on the Arts Grant.
This is McCoubrey's 5th exhibit at Locks, and she has been represented by the gallery since 1997.
