Artist Statement by Sarah DePetris
Working across media, I create multi-dimensional drawings of the almost and the not-yet-made. Emphasizing mark-making and process, I make paintings, installations, and sculptures inspired by piles of rubble and construction debris. My works re-imagine found rocks, bricks and rebar as icons and objects of potential. Paused between destruction and resurrection, they have a wholeness that cannot exist in a realized state. Blending the figurative with the abstract, my drawings contrast believable and impossible renderings of space and depth. Often visually or physically ephemeral, they visually break down, expand and rebuild their surfaces, subjects, and sites. By dissolving the boundary between the made and unmade, my works create accessible and tangible bridges between the real and imagined. Distorting the relationships between viewer, figure, ground, and space, my works blur the distance between absence and presence, longing and the unattainable. My installations, sculptures and paintings make the heavy light and invite the viewer to navigate the space between opposites as places of possibility.