S A R A H   J A C O B S   | | |   @sarahjacobsart

[lives & works - Gettysburg, PA ::: b.1984, Martinsburg, WV] 

Sarah Jacobs is a contemporary maximalist artist. She is represented in NYC by Fremin Gallery, in Pittsburgh by Zynka Gallery, and in Erie by GlassGrowers Gallery. Her work has been exhibited in the US and Europe and she has taken part in artist residencies in Grimma, Germany; Cali, Colombia; and Taos, New Mexico. She has won multiple grants, including the Arts Council England Grant, and her work can be found in public and private collections in the US, UK, and Hong Kong. She has had solo and two-person exhibitions in New York City, London, Wrocław, Poland and Bristol, England, among other cities. Jacobs is Pennsylvania Dutch and was raised in Littlestown, Pennsylvania. She was educated in Art History at Gettysburg College where she was especially drawn to Byzantine art. She received her MFA from the Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 2010. There she studied under Joyce Kozloff, founding member of the Pattern & Decoration and Feminist art movements of the 1970’s, and the minimalist artist Timothy App. Jacobs moved back to the USA in 2014 after three years living in London and Bristol, UK where she became a naturalized British citizen. She lives and paints in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Besides making and studying art, she enjoys fine wine, reading novels and philosophy, long walks in the battlefield, and traveling.

My paintings explore the experience of living without answers to existential questions: what is the nature of consciousness, what is the meaning of life, and what happens after we die? The paintings in the Cave and Carnival series express the noise, complexity, and entanglements of being alive by depicting the things that make life good in overwhelmingly maximalist, entangled compositions that suggest a state of existential unease. Blooming plants, laughing friends, and majestic animals are placed in impossible, often swirling compositions of patterns containing symbolic motifs. The Mystery series artworks speak to existential concerns directly in subject matter, addressing topics such as life and death, the cosmos, and humans’ place in nature. I employ a Baroque-inspired dramatic style: rich colors, bold lighting schemes, and symbolism. To this, I add repetition and maximalist lushness. I use this sumptuously jumbled aesthetic to bewitch and confuse. My paintings incorporate a range of media: oil, digital collages of past paintings, molding paste, assemblage, and gold leaf. Although I often create new symbols, I also employ ones inspired by traditional European motifs. For example, I have used red poppies to symbolize death and saplings to symbolize birth. My nontraditional symbols have included chess pieces to symbolize human drama, medicopters symbolizing tragedy, and roses and tomatoes to suggest audience reactions to a play.