Painter Sarah Rupp aims to create tension in her work. Focused on the female body and the way it’s being portrayed in the media, her portraits (oftentimes intentionally distorted) highlight the physical and psychological tension between beauty and strangeness.
“I’ve depicted the female figure since I started painting, even before school,” said Rupp in an interview with Art of Choice. “In school, I focused on figure painting and they were female, morphed or collaged or manipulated, but always female. I’ve never had the desire to paint anything else.”
The images themselves, a blend of collage art and painting, are collected by Rupp from fashion magazines, as well as the internet, then collaged, distorted rearranged carefully in order to give them a new or heightened identity. According to Rupp, their gazes embody an inward-looking trance-like reverie, frozen in time.
“I am always drawn to faces, and I am most captivated by the gaze,” she stresses. “I try to depict a strong female gaze very often in my work. There is a lot of mystery and vulnerability in the eyes, in the gaze. It creates a dialogue between the viewer and subject, even a connection, and that’s important to me.”
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