C24 Gallery is pleased to announce our first exhibition of work by Sarah Leahy. Her work is rooted in the idea of presence—the vivid sensation one gets from being connected to the sights, sounds, and smells of a particular place. Her work emotes what she calls, “...a quiet luminosity and tactile presence, capturing people, places and the light within… People, spaces, landscape or cityscape, the images are from everyday life and are neither sentimental nor voyeuristic. They are straightforward, presenting particular moments to experience, this invites the viewer to appreciate their own individual context and response.” 

Leahy’s unique practice entails rubbing and contouring layers of black india ink onto sanded plexiglass. Working only with her hands, sandpaper, and ink-saturated paper towels, she achieves a range of textures in her realistic imagery giving it an abstract feel, from thick and velvety to nearly transparent and ghostly. Working from her own reference photos, Leahy develops images that seem to be embedded in their materiality, brought to life by illumination, making tangible the sense of connection to something greater than ourselves while finding beauty in the most ordinary things.

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MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST: 

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Sarah Leahy is a visual artist living and working in New York City. Throughout her career, she has sought to create work that has a sensory and tactile presence with a luminous depth. She uses Plexiglass in a variety of formats to create both intimately scaled and mural-size works, in each instance aiming to establish a spatial and psychological connection with the viewer. Leahy has presented extensively at the Kim Foster Gallery in New York as well as the S. Tucker Cooke Gallery and Holden Gallery at University of North Carolina, CICA Museum in South Korea, Piazza di Pietra Gallery in Rome, Cello Gallery in London, Site:Brooklyn in New York, Mattatuck Museum in Connecticut, Katonah Museum of Art in New York,  Naples Art Association in Florida, VETS Gallery in Rhode Island, Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana, Axis Gallery in California, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Flowers East Gallery in London, Albright Knox Art Gallery in New York, National Academy Museum and Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York. Leahy was the recipient of a grant from The New York State Foundation for the Arts in 2001 and is an ongoing studio recipient from The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts since 1999. She received a Norfolk Fellowship from Yale University and a BA from Bennington College. Her work is in private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Dallas, Pittsburg, Canada and the UK.

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Click Here for Artist CV

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Please contact info@c24gallery.com for more information.

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