Garage 283, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2010 by Sarah Atlee.
Garage 283 is my entry for the invitational exhibit Heart and Soul of the Great Plains. The show opens November 6, 2010 in Lawton and Chickasha, OK. My painting will be in the group on display at Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery in Lawton.
This show is presented in conjunction with the Museum of the Great Plains and the Comanche National Museum. Contemporary art will be presented in the Leslie Powell Gallery, naturalistic art in the Museum of the Great Plains and Comanche art in the Comanche National Museum.
Special guests for opening night will be Buffalofitz, an acoustic band with a highly entertaining brand of music, humor and storytelling.
Since moving to Oklahoma in 2006, I've been enchanted with our particular landscape. Not in a romantic way; I'm piqued by the jumble of decaying billboards, squat beige warehouses, freeway overpasses, prairie, McMansions, and expansive sky. Upon being invitied to participate in this show, I decided to construct a visual quilt composed of abstract snippets of my semi-urban surroundings.
Photo collage for Garage 283, 2010 by Sarah Atlee
This became my reference tool for creating the painting.
Garage 283, detail (landscape view), 2010 by Sarah Atlee
After finishing this experimental piece (first in an open-ended series), I realize that the color palette is about five times brighter than I would have liked. Interestingly, as a beginning painter, I had to fight the urge to cover everything with white glazes. Now, I'm fighting to resist the siren song of Indian yellow, veridian, quinacradone violet, red oxide, and cobalt blue.
Garage 283, detail view, 2010 by Sarah Atlee