ARTIST STATEMENT
My series “Collaborating with Ghosts” began with an artist friend who gifted me a large group of paintings made by her mother and aunt. Both Gerda and Gisela had passed in the early 2000s and Carole felt that the sisters would appreciate the possibility of their work being extended into the future by being part of new works. At the time I was recently divorced and was having trouble approaching a blank page or canvas. The Wohl Sisters’ paintings inspired me and gave me an opportunity to experiment with color and shape.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sara Peak Convery was born and raised in the middle of Iowa. Her earliest conscious creative medium was fabric, using her mother’s sewing machine to make things that sometimes exceeded the line of practicality. In college, she photographed and painted herself and her family, documenting the family home and dynamics as part of her senior project “Being At Home” at University of Iowa. Sara completed her MFA at University of Illinois at Chicago and made Chicago her home. She worked in the consumer photography and video industry for a number of years before deciding to embark on the film that became “I Never Said I Wasn’t Happy” (2013). Since 2014, Convery has actively exhibited her artwork in the greater Chicagoland area and beyond. She established Slacks Window Gallery in 2019 in the front windows of her studio in the Gladstone Park neighborhood in Chicago. Following Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, she began an ongoing body of political work using and reconstructing and recreating flags.
© Sara Peak Convery