Sarah Bedford

BIO
Sarah Bedford lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 1993, attended the Skowhegan Residency in 1997 and started her career at the artist-run Bellwether Gallery. She was awarded the Wallace E Truman award in painting from the National Academy of Fine Art, and a Lower East Side Print Shop fellowship. In spring 2022 she co-curated “Flower Craft” at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City. The show consisted of six weeks of live floral installations and programing created by some of the most dynamic floral artists working in the United States. Bedford’s recent group exhibitions have spanned from New York, to Los Angeles, to Marfa, Texas. Her current solo painting show can be seen at Mrs. in Maspeth, Queens through March 4th. She is represented by Mrs.

STATEMENT
Statement for A Certain Slant of Light at Mrs. January 14–March 4th 2023
A Certain Slant of Light has grown from Sarah Bedford’s dark, a place in which plant life seems to still steadily, yet painstakingly sprout. Multidimensional canvases are filled to the edges with orchestras of dramatic daffodils, daisys, lilies and tulips. Flowers, in the artist’s words, “are a visible reminder of the fragility, beauty and arc of life in this shadowy, broken world”, and in the case for this exhibition, transform into pretty, and longing metaphors painted in acrylic and oil pastel. Palms, sticks, stems, weeds, leaves and vines sprinkle amongst seeds of dread, questioning ideas of existential measurement. If distance from death is in dying, is distance in death also in life itself? —Clare Gemima

Interview with Sarah Bedford

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist?  
I came of age in the 1980’s somewhere between a recession, the Beverly Hillbillies, the Dukes of Hazard and Duran Duran. Being the youngest of four children on a cattle ranch near Roundup, Montana, I became a solitary, myopic “tomboy” who cut her own hair, rode horses, fished, built forts, and traversed the hills collecting wildflowers, fossils and arrowheads. Nature, in all of its beauty and chaos was my vast playground.

Entering the rote structure of grade school was a shock and I was practically illiterate. For the first six years I a social outcast near the flag pole until I started winning local coloring contests on grocery bags and holiday drawing submissions on all (two) of the local TV stations… instant fame! At age seven, my parents moved to a hundred-year old schoolhouse next to our house as summer space for ranch hands. It had big windows, a ping pong table and a totally outdated “library” giving me access to a variety of strange books on art, science, craft and macabre fairy tales… lots of visual information. Consequently, I would spend my long bus ride quietly coloring, tracing pictures so I wouldn’t be picked on.

Can you tell us about some of your most memorable early influences? 
My family had an old widower friend who always came to our holiday dinners. His wife had studied art and he knew I liked to draw. When I was eleven, he gave me a large, 1930’s black leather picnic trunk that had belonged to his wife. Inside, all neatly organized were layer after layer of sketch books, paint trays, pastels, watercolors, an easel, sable brushes, and metal sandwich boxes with forty years old tubes of oil paint — still unopened and perfect. By age 15, I was painting plein air of my mother’s flowerbed, making odd rusted metal constructions and copying landscape painters like Constable, Cole and Bierstadt. 

It was after my first year at college in Boulder, CO when I realized one could actually study art … as a “profession,” so I took the following year off to make art work. By some twist of random fate I moved into my sister’s apartment in Bozeman, MT at the same time as this goth girl was moving out. She mentioned how she was applying for FREE to an art college in NYC called Cooper Union. The following week I went to the library, found the address, spent all spring on the home test. Six months later I was on the 5th floor of Cooper, sketching a live model and intermittently staring out the windows at Astor place in shock and disbelief. The education at Cooper truly changed my life… I owe both the school and that girl. 

Another big influence in my evolution was spending time with the artist Miriam Schapiro. I worked for her off and on after college when she lived in Soho and East Hampton. As an artist, feminist, and a general force of nature, she taught me how to run a studio and the importance of building connections within your community…both artistic, personal and political.

What is your studio space like? What makes your space unique to you? 
I am lucky enough to have a sizable studio with a wall of windows. The view overlooks industrial rooftops and an event production dumpster three stories below. Every Monday, after the large weekend events, the dumpster is overflowing with flower arrangements, seasonal branches in bloom and rolls of (usually crazy colored) fabric. If I spot good things… ones that will live a few more days, I’ll run down and scoop them up to arrange the flowers and draw or paint images in my studio. Sometimes I end up giving the flowers away. My studio floor is an artist co-op model, mostly consisting of painters, that was started over a decade ago in order to keep rents manageable and generate a community. It’s been a game changer given the fast real estate growth of the neighborhood and large film studios moving in everywhere.

Where are you currently based and what brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?
I’ve lived and raised a family in Greenpoint, Brooklyn since 2003. Back then it was a very quiet, affordable part of Brooklyn where few people ventured to visit or wander. This was partially because the G train never ran. Coincidentally, it’s where Bellwether - the first gallery I showed with (in the late 90’s) was located.  But jumping back a bit, I graduated from Cooper Union in the early 90’s and did art-related jobs for about four years. That was when Soho was the ‘The Art Scene’ and not an especially good time for painters. In the summer 1997 I was accepted to a residency in Maine called Skowhegan.  Aside from my formal education at Cooper, that summer was the equivalent to grad school and it transformed my painting practice though tthe intensity of the program and its fellow artists. The friendships and ongoing conversations that I developed through my time at Skowhegan and being a part of the community at Mrs.— the gallery I am currently represented by, have shown me that there is no clear path to creating art or having a ‘career’ but that living one’s life authentically – with curiosity and generosity.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day? 
I used to be a sunrise person but now it’s “sunset’ with a few a.m. emails. Then I’m out the door by 10 or 11 a.m. depending upon if there is a deadline lurking or Peter Pan doughnut detour. The studio is just a few blocks away so I try to stay for 8-9 hours or longer depending on the light. A spring day is an ideal day to see art with friends or visit their studios. Periodically I’ll grab lunch with the wonderful painter, Lou Fratino, whom I met in a ceramics class years back and currently has a studio down the hallway. We’ll head to Eddy’s Corner for Middle Eastern food and discuss current shows, painting materials, gardens, flowers, new books, ceramics etc...

What gets you in a creative groove or flow? Is there anything that interrupts your creative energy? 
I have this industrial wood shop compressor above me so headphones are mandatory, along with; spotify, podcasts, good coffee, flowers, and sunlight in some various order. An uncluttered table and a pile of white paper is really inspiring, as well as a stack of books that I frequently rotate based on new interests and obsessions. My current pile consists of; Modern ikebana, On the Necessity of Gardening, Carlo Scarpa, Lois Dodd, Shapes from Out of Nowhere, Ruth Asawa, Amy Sillman’s Faux Pas, Phillip Guston’s writings, older old alpine floral books, Matisse, Braque, Arthur Dove, Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit and other fiction or random poetry that catches my interest.

How do you maintain momentum in your practice? 
There is always something else to be doing right? “Why, Hello, you cute instagram kittens!” … but the point iin life is to ignore all those tempting distractions (and the multitude of obligations) to focus on what you can offer to the world. The here and now is where it’s at. Lately, I go into the studio, lay out my paint and start painting. I try (really hard) not to overthink things- to just respond to what is in front of me on any given day. Second guessing and deep thinking usually leads me to a state of paralysis, but if I keep pushing I usually find a path into (or out of) a painting I’m making. That’s been working for me lately. I’ve also learned to trust my “inner voice” so that part is exciting for me. If I’m stuck, I tend to jump in between paper pieces and canvas work. Some paintings might take a day or two and others take a week .. or a year. The “process” is the journey so to speak.

What medium/media are you working in right now? What draws you to this particular material or method? 
I’ve always experimented with all kinds of paint and additives; sand, mica, twigs, fabric, scenic paint, house paint and spray paint. My real love is exploring color. During COVID I returned to using acrylic paint and oil pastels. I like the Golden Fluid and High flow acrylics or anything super matte and Guerra Paint because their shop is nearby and you can mix up large quantities in any viscosity. They also have a vast selection of very unusual pigments. For works on paper, I like Holbein gouache, Caran d’Ache Neocolor crayons and Kremer pigment watercolors. As for new materials: I’ve been holding onto a few bags of Tarantula Sand - I discovered at the local pet store. It’s a sparkly-black sand (minus the Tarantulas). 

Can you walk us through your overall process in making your current work? Does drawing play a role in your process? 
I’ve been ordering large pre-stretched canvases lately because I tend to mess them up when stretching. I work in acrylic with large brushes quickly on several canvases at a time establishing the backgrounds, usually moving them from the floor to the wall for a few days until I get the shapes and layers looking the way I want. I then, usually reference preliminary sketches I’ve done or images drawn on top of Iphone photos, then I’ll use charcoal to outline the initial composition. Drawing for me is usually with a paint brush- it’s intuitive and involves a gestural line. When the paintings get close to done, I’ll go in with oil paint or pastel for the highlighting and bring out the colors. 

What is exciting about your process currently? 
I am really happy with my most recent show at Mrs. of somnambulistic florals and prehistoric flowers. I am taking a moment to digest it all …catching up with shows, friends and family - restoring ancient cabins on the ranch as well as being in the studio ‘organizing’ old works on paper, colorful plastic mesh from the fruit store, drinking coffee, revisiting art books, and doing small studies on paper in gouache or watercolor. I like to use the small Fabriano Single Deckled Cards of watercolor paper in boxes of 100 because if they fail one doesn’t have to re-stretch a canvas. They are a great way to work fast - like 20 or 30 at a sitting to “see what happens”. The small paper size leads to abstract forms and strange color combinations, which I often use as points of departure for large paintings. They kind of work like Tarot cards for me when I’m searching for some insight. 

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future? 
Painting, for me, is about creating a place to inhabit both symbolically and conceptually. That ideal “nexus” is full of possibilities and hope. I’m interested in plants, nature, the quotidian details of life but also leaning into aspects of ecology, climate change and science. Wondering how to envision our future without being deeply saddened. Those majestic Thomas Moran paintings of Yellowstone would now be paintings of traffic jams, floods and forest fires. 

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors? 
After the economy tanked in 2008, I fell into the flower business as a way to keep the studio, raise children and help pay the bills. It was a niche business where I had weekly floral accounts for luxury real estate model apartments all over Manhattan. I structured the work to 2-4 days a week in order for me to be in the studio the rest of the week. Over the years, I got to know very talented floral artists, the oddball characters in the NYC flower market, and to see spectacular interiors throughout Manhattan. Floral arranging forced me to think quickly. I closed the floral business a year ago and transferred all that energy into co-curating ‘Flower Craft’ at the Museum of Art and Design Spring of 2022 with Head Curator Elissa Arthur. Elissa shared my passion for flowers and the vision of presenting contemporary floral art as a sculptural form. The show, an ambitious six weeks rotation, displayed wildly inventive floral installations by some of the most exceptional floral artists working in the US today. 

Have you had any epiphanies recently that have changed the course of your work or caused you to shift directions?  
After all these years in New York, my mind still gravitates to the landscapes and plants on our family ranch in Montana. My parents and brother still run cattle and I find myself wanting to figure out how to capture it- the light- my memories- to paint it – in a modern way or maybe to simply escape. 

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you? 
I am curious and love to discover new materials and explore unknown situations - so much inspires me. Recently, for my show at Mrs., Emily Dickinson’s collection of poetry gave me insight into how to conceptualize this new body of work with floral imagery. I hadn’t previously read Dickinson and I found her profoundly lyrical language conveyed to me a painterly sensibility of nature, light, color, and seasonal change with an undercurrent of a gender, politics, the female gaze and forcefulness. Her poetry, love of flowers, and meticulous herbarium online at the Harvard library is a stunning archive.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out? 
Summer ’22: Louise Bourgeois’ Early paintings at the Met Museum and The Armory Show; Nicola Pottinger, Olivia Jia, Miko Veldkamp and Tal R

Fall/Winter ‘22-23: Joan Mitchell 1979-1985, Alex Katz retrospective at the Guggenheim, Robin F Williams at PPOW, Suspended, Unsited at Foyer-LA, “Love Letter” at Pace, and “Roma/NY” 1953-1964 at Zwirner

This Winter/Spring: Nikki Maloof at Perrotin, Derrick Adams at the Flag Foundation, Sam Crockrell at International Waters, Ohad Meromi at 56 Henry

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?
Trust your gut and learn to know when a painting is finished. If you don’t know- set it aside and deal with it tomorrow. If you're really not sure then come back to it in a week. If it takes a year then burn it. 

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you? 
I’ve started some larger paintings loosely based on roadside weeds. I’ve also wanted to create some large ceramic tiles for a mural and weavings so maybe I’ll head down to Mexico. There are a few group shows on the horizon this year but I don’t have specifics. I have a pet project involving artists and house plants.

Anything else you would like to share? 
That song by Little Simz:  “I got one life and I might just live it”

To find out more about Sarah Bedford check out her Instagram and website.