As with much of Harrison’s recent work, the ‘Broken Gate’, 2021 was created in two successive stages.
To begin the image-making process, Harrison employs the pre-modern tradition of Plein air painting by
taking her materials and tools to the rural areas of Long Island, NY, a New York state coastal region that
extends directly east of the island of Manhattan.

During this initial phase, Harrison views her engagement with Plein air painting as less of a
documentative approach and more an act of visual sampling that is inherently abstracted while physically
applying paint to the surface. Harrison views the acts of observation and mark-making as necessary steps
to create a final image that transcends simple representation powered by filtering one’s gaze through
individual perception. Drawing visual cues from such artists such as Chaïm Soutine, Lois Dodd, Édouard
Manet, and Paul Thek, the Plein air aspect of Harrison’s paintings speak to a timeless human affection for
nature with the psychological and emotional landscapes that shape one’s experience of the world.
Once the first work mode is complete, Harrison returns her partially realized paintings to her urban studio
to add the imagined second plane of images. Harrison refers to this surface imagery as ‘Gates’, which (in
terms of private property) serve the dual purpose of inviting the wanted in and keeping the unwanted out.
Similarly, Harrison’s embellished gates invite the viewer to look into her paintings, framing the depicted
natural world behind them and separating the viewer from full envelopment. The twisted, coloured,
acutely detailed, and often organic-looking motifs that make up these gates include widely diverse
historical references to such luminaries as Leonora Carrington, Paul Laffoley, and Ashley Bickerton and
decorative details emblematic of the middle-ages.

Walking an ever-fine line between surrealist fantasy and representation, Harrison’s layered gates guide the
pace and direction of the viewer's eye around the painting’s surface, often continuing into new physical
dimensions on the sides of the paintings as well. Harrison pushes the viewing experience further by
painting on angular, non-standard-sized supports to emphasize her paintings as objects and, as she
describes, “Give a body to the painting”.

SARAH ESME HARRISON (b. 1990, New York, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn, NYC and Long
Island, NY) received her MFA from Yale University, New Haven, CT in 2017, and BFA and BA from
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI and Brown University, Providence, RI in 2013. Selected
solo exhibitions include Sarah Esme Harrison @ Michael Thibault, Val de Loire, FR; Sarah Esme
Harrison @ Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY (2021); Souvenir Garden @ The Valley, Taos,
NM (2021); and Rugs, Tate 2, Providence, RI (2015). Selected recent group exhibitions include Out of
Hand @ Gildar Gallery, Denver, CO (two-person w/ Tommy Coleman) (2018); Close Quarters @ 1969
Gallery, New York, NY (2017); Yale Painting @ New Release, New York, NY (2017); Paris, Texas @
Artspace, New Haven, CT (2017); Swatch @ Olive Tjaden Gallery, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
(2017); Coda @ Green Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, CT (2017); A Common Thread @ Mixed
Greens, New York, NY (2015); and Room Service @ Motel, Brooklyn, NY (three-person with Raque
Ford and Daniel Klaas Beckwith) (2015). Harrison has received press in such publications as Artnet,
Artsy, Galerie Magazine, Yale Daily Press, Artforum, AQNB, and many more.