Sarah Cain

Sarah Cain ushers abstract painting into new terrain by inviting her audience into the painterly space and letting her works occupy reality beyond the frame. Her boisterous pieces can be found on paper, canvas, the wall, the ceiling, and found objects. She is inspired by and often initiates her actions from a mistake. Ephemeral and reliant upon the contours of the spaces they occupy, these paintings are often improvised and imbue an emotional resonance to her aggressive works. Her studio-made works are more concentrated upon the union of the sculptural surface and the painted one—she explores when a stroke or mark might be insufficient, and the ways in which objects might be a better translation of abstraction’s limited language. Cain’s works are an extension of the female body, and the forms dissolve then resurface like notions within her own psychological space.

Cain has exhibited at a number of institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts, Imperial Belvedere Palace Museum, Vienna, and Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California, among others. She participated in the Busan Biennale in 2006, and the California Biennial in 2009 and 2008.