The entrance to Sarah Lutz’ apartment greets you with a friendly sense of community. The ideals of trust and acceptance radiate as the tenants of the building have seemingly become an unconventional family, and a staircase has turned into an expression of diversity and universality. A Chinese gold cat and a fake Christmas tree are perched on paint buckets at the first stairway landing, while hipster surfboards await your arrival at the second.
Sarah greets us extending the same sense of community that the entrance had so effortlessly provided. A dark green apron and army green pants have never clashed so perfectly, and splattered paint has never looked so intentional then as it did on Sarah. Her confidence and cool was immediately understood. Walking into the studio, the endless pastel colors imitate a confectionary while the swift lines create an underwater fantasy of swimming jellyfish and calm water. Filled with walls and tables of inspirational value, Sarah’s collection of personal and sentimental ideals are tenderly exposed.
Scanning the room, we are not surprised to find Sarah’s brushes placed in a recycled coffee cake mix can. However, aside from the countless paint brushes, Sarah uses a wide variety of objects to illustrate her imagination, including squeegees, multi-headed brushes, patterned scrapers, palette knives, spirograph, stencils, spray paint, glitter, a toothbrush for spattering, and a cake decorator.
Sarah’s work is joyful, playful and celebratory. Life is good. Having lived in the old colonial capital of Guatemala as a teen, Sarah was influenced by the “pentimento” of colors, ranging from mustard yellow to dusty reds, caking the old buildings. The process of scraping, building, and reestablishing sceneries allows a painter to use what is present to create something unseen. Even in the few minutes that we were there, Sarah began sanding down a seemingly finished piece of work to reveal a newly discovered and inimitable color. Sarah’s ability to create is articulated through her ability to destroy, to scratch the surface, and to discover the beauty hidden within rather than settle for first impressions.
Sarah’s paintings encapsulate the synthetics of life, while appreciating the beauty of nature. Hard-shelled candies and bubble gum are the muses of her pastel paintings such as Fireball Season, and that popular chocolate with the little white dots is the subject of her work titled accordingly Nonpareils. However, the vibrancy of candy is not the only form of vivacity present in Sarah’s paintings. The years spent snorkeling at her grandfather’s home in St Thomas has clearly made its way to Sarah’s canvases. The unimaginable shapes and colors of sea creatures and sea anemones flow through the paintings as naturally as their muses themselves. As contradictory as it may seem, the artificial and the earthly clash so beautifully in Sarah’s lively paintings. “You might feel like you are making up the wackiest color, but then you pick up a National Geographic and there will be a tree frog that is real, but crazier-looking than anything synthetic you could imagine.”
Sarah is a painter, but she is also a wife, and a mother to two creative young women, the inspirations for her sentimental collections. Purple NYU spirit flags, a pamphlet for a ballet recital, buttons from present and past elections, friendship bracelets, and seashells collected on Cape Cod are just a few of the things “tenderly exposed” around the studio. When noticing what seemed to be a painting mishap, Sarah shared a story that truly encapsulates what artistry means to her. “My husband had been drawing from a reproduction of an Italian master painting of the crucifixion, our daughter who was three or four at the time, picked up a green marker and drew her rendition of Ariel the Mermaid on top of John’s pencil drawing… we thought it was such an ironic juxtaposition, I have had it hanging on my studio wall ever since!” This odd accident has become a treasure, a symbol of the love, acceptance, and connection that art can bring to familial relationships.
Sarah’s studio is homey, but like any home, there’s also the hustle and bustle of being a working artist. Inevitably, Sarah is busy! A collection of work made to be under $100 sits on a table in preparation for shipment to Japan, while another body of work is in the process of being packed for shipment to Provincetown, MA. And amidst all the orders, Sarah is preparing for a big move to the Hudson Valley. We are grateful to have had the pleasure of visiting Sarah’s studio in New York City, and we look forward to our trips to the Hudson Valley in the future.
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This month we bring you abstract painter Sarah Lutz. Sarah was influenced by the artist Philip Guston whose painting, To Fellini, sold at auction in May 2013 for $25.8 million. His work is in museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. For more of Sarah’s work, go to: http://www.sarah-lutz.com/
You don’t have to be a multi-millionaire to own great art.
xx,
P&R
