Sara MacCulloch “Landscapes”

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts

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Kathryn Markel Fine Arts presents Landscapes, Sara MacCulloch’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery.

Taking in Sara MacCulloch’s landscapes can evoke an uncanny sense of familiarity. The scenes may resonate with the viewer, whether or not they have ever stepped foot in those surroundings.

Typically completed in one studio session, her works have a sense of immediacy with fresh brushstrokes and compositions teetering on the edge of being resolved and being overworked. If there is a change MacCulloch wants to make, she scrapes the paint away down to the surface to start completely anew in order to preserve that energetic emotion of her marks. In doing so, the final piece also embodies her relationship to the painting itself, giving direct insight into her experience of creating the work. It also parallels the fleeting attachment MacCulloch had to the area she is now immortalizing.
Her paintings capture the essence of a place and her emotional connection of experiencing it, rather than portraying minute details of representation. The overall impression of a MacColloch landscape is one of muted serenity, but they have a lingering impact rooted in subtle shifts of color, painterly abstraction, and a lush organic palette. Their hazy portrayal depicts, it seems, more a sense of nostalgia than the specificity of place.

Sara MacCulloch received her BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She exhibits extensively throughout Canada in Halifax, Toronto and Edmonton. Her work is in the collections of the Nova Scotia and Canada Council Art Banks, the Gotsland Kunstmuseum in Gotsland, Sweden, and various public and private collections. MacCulloch is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including four individual grants from the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism and Culture and an Established Artist Award from Creative Nova Scotia.