Sarah Ball, Welsh Artist of the Year in 2013, and an encouraged artist at the Royal Academy’s Summer Show, has her first solo show in London at the Coningsby Gallery, which is just round the corner from Goodge Street tube station. And what an exhibition!
Small is definitely beautiful. Sarah’s portraits measure no more that 18 x 24cm, the tone of each is muted, the pose motionless and the eyes so compelling that each portrait seems to speak of their past, to our present.
I remember talking to Paul Vates, the actor, who was explaining the difference between stage and television. Television is all in the face and eyes. So too are Sarah’s portraits, painted with a flawless technique, and the universal blank stare of those locked in a place of suspended life and time.
We look at them and remember when, perhaps to a different degree, we were lost. I founded and run Words for the Wounded and have seen this look in the eyes of the wounded many many times.
Sarah uses mainly oil on board for her signature portraiture. She moves from prostitutes to soldiers with an artist’s objective eye, but with intimacy and empathy, revealing her emotional depth, a depth that connects with us.
The artist sourced these disadvantaged characters from photographs, many held in the Stanley Burns archive in the US, Denmark’s state archives, and from civil war photographs from the Library of Congress in DC, their personal histories unknown.
Her work provokes questions. What crimes, what woes, what damage was wrought on each individual? She acknowledges that all humankind experiences damage of some kind and it is for this reason that there is an implicit understanding between the subject and the observer. We say, ‘Ah yes, I remember…’
This is a glimpse into the subjects’ reality and at last they receive a sense of compassion, from Sarah and from us.
It will be interesting to see where Sarah Ball, represented by www.bo-lee.co.uk (bo.lee Gallery), goes from here. Don’t miss this exhibition which closes on 7th June. It’s at Coningsby Gallery, 30 Tottenham St. London W1T 4RJ