Camden Nights

(Los Angeles, CA) de boer is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Sara Carter, her second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Carter’s paintings are influenced by moments of seeking solace from trauma and abuse experienced in her early adult life. Each painting is engaged and fueled by a journey of highly personal memories of Carter searching for peace. The resulting pictures aim to evoke the intangible—fleeting events like the impression of a day in the park or the memory of returning to her childhood home in Camden, TX.

Carter begins each painting by carefully layering atmospheric and gestural marks on heavy linen canvas. The result is a complex balance of disruption giving voice to dramatic experiences and moments of time in specific places. Carter transforms the canvas into a laboratory that ponders darkness and misery equally with light and pleasure. Through the use of color, form, and texture, Carter prompts all of the human emotions—tragedy, serenity, ecstasy, isolation, and despair—culminating in a sense of indecision from the intimate frame of a canvas.

In Gramercy Park, 2022, Carter pairs moments of luminous color with sculptural order, where the inherent chaos of translating the feeling of a place coalesces in balance with the artist’s memory. Achieved with masterful mixtures of oversized and small brushes, Carter constructs the foreground as a destination for gestural strokes. Throughout her paintings, Carter balances spontaneous actions with essential periods of observation, carefully considering her next mark. The emerging composition often is interlaced with pours and brushstrokes, creating textural depth that encourages the viewer to imagine its construction.