Sara Fuller
Photographer/Painter
My work, whether photography or painting, tends to lie between the conceptual and moment-in-time; where “real” worlds and “constructed” worlds meet, beauty is both enhanced and raw. In my recent project Tree & Sky, I look through the patchwork of human destruction in the face of climate change and work to frame and capture the wonder still peeking through. This is often difficult as our mark is everywhere, but in this series, I hope to show the struggle and the beauty of the task, exposing my own highs and lows, nodding toward the emotional disharmony that defines this precarious era.
Similarly, in Syncopated, I work to communicate a feeling of being decentered, of being at odds with the world. My subject matter is expanded to include whatever is in view: houses, buildings, streets, carousels, people, birds, dogs. Their positioning within the surroundings is meant to show a condensation of emotion and to allow the viewer to contemplate their own emotive world (the metaphorical leap from the referent to the experiential).
In Mary, I explore the internal bounds of being human—and the potential love that can be displayed in one moment—through my long-term relationship with my partner. Mary and I grew up together through our 20s and 30s; in this series, I work toward capturing our inward private universe amongst our external outside world.
Conversely, through Remnants, I elevate depreciated outward elements of my life. By highlighting textures and colors in food gone bad and walls riddled with mold—nodding toward the temperance of our lives and heightening the rotten moments of our past—I aim to expose it, to see it, to accept it. Alongside this examination of natural decay is my documentation of a wasp infestation in my Brooklyn apartment, which contemplates what it is like to watch/experience/inflict death and projects human experience onto the (individual and collective) wasp.
Constructed Scapes is a completed project clearly centered in the concept but which holds the roots of my landscape photography. I photographed 6 different landscapes in formal, expressionistic, and abstract styles. I then juxtaposed those different styles in the boundaries of a 39″x48″ grid to explore the beauty in the environment and also to expose the unknowability of place and limits in representation of space.
Fusion & Seizure is another completed project depicting different moments in various related tableaus under baroque lighting. I stage people, including myself and Mary, amongst a world of screens, literal (i.e. television, film, visual art, advertisement) but also individual screens (i.e. the eyes). We each have our own interpretations, casting doubt on the veracity of society. The notion of reality incites a dissonance amidst its varied perceptions, bringing perpetual strain between people. Our constant search for unity will continue because no connection will make one fragmented existence plus another equal a whole.
In Limbed Landscapes, a series of watercolor paintings, I take inspiration from the natural form and structure of trees—branches, limbs, trunks, leaves—and fuse these elements with the human form in slightly strange or surreal juxtapositions. In these various arrangements of intimacy, I explore our shared experience of pain, growth, and the drive to subsist amongst daunting terrain.
Sara Fuller grew up in Southeast South Dakota where she first began painting and photographing. She received her B.A. in English with minors in Art and Psychology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and her MFA at the School of Visual Arts in Photography, Video and Related Media. She has worked as a Pilates instructor in the area of pain management and postural awareness for over 10 years. She lives with her partner and future pet in Brooklyn, NY, where she continues to photograph, paint, and study the body.