VIRTUAL SENIOR SHOW: Sarah Lynn
A lot of art is being vulnerable. I have found that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed my vulnerabilities in a way I did not think possible. It has forced me to begin growing into the person I suppose I was meant to be. A major part of that growth has come from developing my relationship to my Jewish heritage. This show is a rumination on the pandemic and my personal experience with Jewish culture and spiritualism over the last year and a half of my life. It is the starting point for my continuing journey.
Title: “Untitled (Pomegranate)”
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Year: 2020
Description: In Judaism, the pomegranate is a significant fruit. I have heard it said that each seed inside is akin in number and variety to the commandments in the Torah, Judaism’s central religious text. This color study helped me begin a journey to my connection with my culture.
Title: “Judaism”
Medium: Oil on paper
Year: 2020
Description: This work reflects the feelings and memories I have regarding my relationship with Judaism. Represented are elements present in familial and collective celebrations which dominate my memories of my Jewish experience and inform who I am.
Title: “Untitled (Citrus)”
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Year: 2020
Description: Citrus is known for its immune boosting properties. Over the course of the pandemic I, like so many other people, have felt afraid at the unknown and unseen virus spreading through the world. Before the vaccine, aside from masking and hand washing, it seemed so much about protection from the virus was left to chance. I painted this in an effort to put out some protective energy into the world that I hoped would rest around me and my family.
Title: “Reaching”
Medium: Oil on canvas
Year: 2020
Description: At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I felt disconnected from not only other people, but myself and the life I had known before lockdown. This was my first piece in oil and helped visualize my sinking feeling that I was drifting farther from familiarity, unable to reach my old reality.
Title: “Childhood”
Medium: Oil on paper
Year: 2020
Description: Over the course of the pandemic I have found comfort in things I enjoyed as a child. In the work, the smaller hand gently supports the larger, its color seeping into the larger hand’s shadow. At this point of contact, the most vivid of the suns overhead, the present, touches the larger hand’s finger. The ocean and suns, passages of time, cocoon this embrace.
Title: “Untitled (Anxiety)”
Medium: Oil on particle board
Year: 2021
Description: My anxiety has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Here I tried to depict the now common clouded, scrambled feeling I have alongside the alternate hope and fear I have about the coming days, months, years. The eyes are left without pupils to add to the sense of imbalance expressed in the piece.
Title: “Bigger Things to Worry About”
Medium: Oil on particle board
Year: 2021
Description: This piece is part of a series I have begun on spiritualism. It is about not letting the small things bog you down in the bigger scheme of things. This work reflects both my attempt to connect more deeply with the universe as a whole as well as myself.
Title: “Planes & Travel”
Medium: Oil on particle board
Year: 2021
Description: This piece is part of a series I have begun on spiritualism. I sometimes think about the way spirits, particularly my ancestors, appear in the world- in whatever form they take. I think that in whatever capacity, they exist in another space and are sometimes able to make contact with or exist in our world for a time. This piece visualizes those points of contact with our plane of existence from the others surrounding it.
Title: “Kaddish”
Medium: Oil on paper
Year: 2020
Description: The Kaddish is a prayer in Hebrew used by Jewish communities in mourning. It makes no allusion to death in the literal sense, but is instead a prayer for the life of the person who has passed. Often this prayer is accompanied by the ritual of lighting Yahrtzeit candles at the time of and on the anniversary of the person’s passing. The prayer is written on this piece and painted over. It was painted in summer of 2020 in memory of the victims to COVID-19 and police brutality.