Between 10and5 includes Paintings by Sarah Biggs: Exploring surreal landscapes.
With a gentle yet definite touch, Sarah Biggs paints surreal landscapes of hazy colour – sometimes dotted with a faint figure or few on a private quest of searching and discovery. At other times they’re left to exist without the presence of life-like forms, and the spaces at once familiar and foreign become the subject. Only a year after graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Biggs stands out as one of South Africa’s emerging contemporary artists whose work is characterised, in part, by highly unusual and often surprising colour choices.
Currently, a few of her enchanting paintings are being shown alongside those of Kirsten Lilford in an exhibition at Salon 91 titled Distance. Of which, she says, “Anyone who is close to someone involved in environmental research might identify with their repeated references to a place called ‘the field’. It is a term I have become increasingly attuned to. ‘The field’ stands as a place which people in chosen discliplines disappear off to, in search of answers to things I am unable to fully understand. A place for discovering and searching, for measuring and transporting and jotting down notes, this ‘field’ – very tangible for some – exists for me only in stories and anecdotes, in second-hand images and foreign terms. I began to make paintings in response, and the notion of ‘distance’ became increasingly useful.”
