February 2012

Sarah Walker, "Hover," 2011, acrylic on panel, 30 x 40".

Sarah Walker

The vertiginously immersive abstract paintings of Sarah Walker are on view in "EYEFINGER." If the metaphor that seemed to underlie previous works was the image bombardment of electronic media - feeling refreshed yet - the Brooklyn-based painter has chosen a more sedate one this time, emphasizing process again, but with equally satisfying results: the "scholar stones" of Chinese Taoism, naturally eroded stones of picturesque shape that resembled the mountains depicted in landscape paintings, the spiritual refuges of tiny meditative gentlemen in retirement. According to Walker, such stones were unobtrusively refined and polished after being nearly completed by wind and water.

Likewise, she employs chance and hydrodynamics to lay the foundations for her images, found objects by no means, but based on the equivalent of throws of the dice - with fluid acrylic paint, which she enriches and embellishes with layers of careful brushwork. The complex but cohesive paintings that result from this painterly polishing suggest, variously, maps, diagrams both architectural and anatomical, and crystalline visionary psychedelia. They are nearly indescribable beyond such generalizations, but the artists's titles - "Particle Accelerator," "Arteries," "Unnamed Meteor," "Mount Meru," and "Spiderpool" - reflect some of her artistically recombinant and complementary interests. "EYEFINGER" is an eyeful.