ARTIST STATEMENT
“A few years ago, my daily life reached a tipping point where I could no longer continue trying to achieve the level of performative productivity demanded by our culture. I live with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, which means my body has trouble processing the normal cyclical fluctuations of female hormones. Living with this disorder has forced me to closely examine my values, art, career, and the cultural messages shaping my daily life. These past couple of years, I’ve consciously made adjustments that enable me to show up in the world in the way that I desire by making significant changes in my definition of “success” and productivity.
During this time, my work became more abstract as art became a form of therapy for me – – a release. I often start my paintings with layers of color that appeal to my inner senses and emotions and layer them with mark-making and shapes that attempt to capture the constant shifting and uncertainty I experience daily. Through these works, I am searching for a language that describes an internal world. Often these marks are in knots or layers that intermingle and become tied together to create pieces both chaotic and whole.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sarah Frazier is an artist and educator living and working in New Jersey. She uses tools of beauty, humor, and pleasure to explore complex and often overlooked topics hidden in American culture.
Raised in the suburbs of Seattle, WA, Frazier loves a well-made blanket and the smell of burning leaves in the fall. She is a graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle (BFA) and San Francisco State University (MFA). Her work has been included in group exhibitions from coast to coast, and in 2016 she was awarded her first solo exhibition in Long Island City, NY with the support of an Individual Artist Grant from Queens Council on the Arts. She has been awarded residencies at the Jentel Foundation (2018), the Vermont Studio Center (2015), and the SFSU Romberg Tiburon Center (2013). She currently teaches in Art Education at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and Caldwell University in New Jersey. When not teaching, she can be found hiking the parks of New Jersey or around a board game table with friends.
© Sarah Frazier