Sarah dwyer

Dwyer, an intuitive colorist, exuberantly re-imagines familiar forms to begin a freewheeling, helter-skelter conversation between different media and surfaces. A dance of the figure through abstraction, her works record the physical gestures of making, themselves on the cusp of animation, poised to fall, to leap, to fly, to die.arah Dwyer (b. 1974) is an Irish artist, raised in Ireland and the UK and working in London. Dwyer has a somewhat mischievous and subversive approach to painting, printmaking, life drawing, and, more recently, experimental sculpture. An intuitive colorist, Dwyer exuberantly re-imagines familiar forms to begin a freewheeling, helter-skelter conversation between different media and surfaces. A dance of the figure through abstraction, her works record the physical gestures of making, themselves on the cusp of animation, poised to fall, to leap, to fly, to die.

Her practice itself insists on constant motion and renewal as new imagery is often generated by reworking paintings. Through the merciless, physical process of removal and insertion, as the boxer jabs and ducks, Dwyer confronts her fears around the finality of loss. The rejigged object becomes a metaphor for the vulnerability, courage, and stamina that life demands.

Dwyer’s exploration of image and form through storytelling, and interest in Jungian principles, binds her to the legacies of Surrealism; the Cobra movement.   Distorted figures, with assertive limbs and confrontational appendages, live in the space where truth and invention merge. Shadows on the cave wall, flicker on the edge of memory, prompting recognition but remaining unknowable, deeply coded in Dwyer's alchemistic lexicon.