Untitled #12 ("Say Sneeze" series) by Sarah Beattie

Sarah Beattie

Home: Hamilton, Ontario
Title: Untitled #12 (“Say Sneeze” series)
Media: Oil on canvas / huile sur toile
Dimensions: 56 x 43 cm
Website: sarahb-t.com/home.html

Consistently, my work deals with the complex relationship between painting and photography; the juxtaposition of the manual and the mechanical, and the present and past moment. Say Sneeze is a series of painted portraits exploring ambiguous facial expressions. While each expression may communicate a different emotion to each viewer, they are not evidence of emotion at all, but a bodily function which all beings are subject to. The abrupt act of a sneeze has been captured by the flash of a camera, highlighting extreme contours of the faces by heightening contrast. By translating pixels into brushstrokes – from the screen to the canvas – the recorded moment oscillates between instantaneous and infinite. The paintings stand static in perpetual anticipation of a climax never to arrive.

EDUCATION:
 2008-2012 Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Preforming Arts, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2013 Say Sneeze, The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, ON

GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2013 The Artist Project Juried Contemporary Art Fair (Untapped Emerging Artists section), Better Living Centre, Exhibition Place, Toronto, ON
2012 BMO 1st Art (winning submissions exhibition), Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, ON
Perceptionists, Rodman Hall Art Centre, St. Catharines, ON

AWARDS & SCHOLARSHIPS:
2013 A Winner of the Untapped Emerging Artists Juried Competition (The Artist Project Toronto)
2012 Ontario’s provincial winner for the 10th annual BMO 1st Art! Invitational Graduating Student Art Competition for Untitled #6* (Bank of Montreal)
2011 Ann Pineault Memorial Scholarship for the Arts (Brock University)

PRESS & PUBLICATIONS:
BMO Financial Group. (Fall 2012). The Winners. Canadian Art, 169.
Dawn Cain, “BMO 1st Art! Exhibition 2012”, Exhibition Catalogue, 2012.
Henschel, Steve. “Inspired sneeze lands top recognition”, Niagara this Week, August 30, 2012.