Sarah Lee - At Moonlight

When was the last time you sat in stillness? Turned off your phone? Closed your eyes and allowed your brain to neutralize and excavate an instinct deep inside, opening the senses to risk and exposure? Likely not recently.

You’ve probably run far away from that place since 2020 when that was the only thing that we knew. You’ve gone back to work. To your friends. To your life. To music and dancing and laughter. Where the sun warms the skin and a cool breeze brushes softly across the face.

Sarah Lee’s mind has not left that place. It is the essence of her artwork, probing the vulnerability of silence and its echoes across nature, where it is most inherent. She paints scenes of a winter wonderland with no footprints to mark the way. A dark ocean where you could blink your eyes and believe the water is the sky. Twisted trees that contort across an unearthly green forest. Moonlight that mimics a spotlight following across a stage. These are the works that make up Lee’s solo exhibition, Two Skies, which were on view at the albertz benda gallery in New York. Mischievous paintings that at first glance evoke serenity but, in actuality, echo a place hidden within the human condition.

There is something so brave about exploring one’s loneliness. To turn over the leaves in a teacup to see darkness and be willing to pour another cup. And most notably, opening these feelings, then broadcasting them to the world in your artwork. Lee’s paintings are not for the valorous warrior. They are for the one cowering in the corner, assurance that the feeling of shadows crawling across the skin is more universal than you’re often made to believe.

Shaquille Heath: I kind of have an odd first question for you… Do you believe in magic?