Sarah McEneaney at the ICA

Art in America, Sept, 2004 by Anne Fabbri

To look at a Sarah McEneaney painting is to enter her world as she experiences it, with all its details and intimacy. Ingenuous at first glance, like a Grandma Moses narrative in primary colors and uncertain perspective, McEneaney transforms views of daily life into works of subtle patterns and complex compositions.

Her first solo museum exhibition, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, organized by Ingrid Schaffner, included works from 1985 to 2003 and put forth an impressive visual autobiography. The 40 egg-tempera paintings on wood of McEneaney in her domestic environment, her studio and outdoors ranged in size from 14 by 12 inches to 48 by 60 inches. Also on view were 16 gouache drawings on paper of scenes from her worldwide travels and 10 small, painted sculptures of her cat and dog companions, past and present. The paintings, seemingly spontaneous but based on multiple sketches, are like pages from a diary. They document her civic activism and her post-op recovery; they show her bathing, daydreaming and making art.

June 15, 1998 I, the date an intruder broke into her house and brutally raped her, is an anomaly among the colorful, mostly cheerful paintings. Using black fingerprinting dust left by the police, McEneaney depicts her assailant as a faceless, hulking, shadowy mass on top of her unclothed form. Her arms are crossed protectively over her breasts, her lips clenched, her unseeing eyes wide in horror. The only color is the blood-red tempera used for her sweat-streaked hair and body outlines.

In Epistle (1997), the artist stands in her kitchen reading a letter. Surfaces in this red and yellow kitchen tilt forward as in Persian miniature paintings, and her studio space recedes into the distance through a door on the right. Among otherwise everyday items, an erotic painting hangs on the far left wall. A vagina-shaped mark can be seen in the wood grain on the door to her studio. These elements suggest that she reads a letter from a lover.

McEneaney's project has a lineage dating back to illuminated manuscripts, such as the Tres Riches Heures (1413-16), in which the Limbourg Brothers paint scenes of daily life. Strong patterning, distortions and vibrant overall colors recall Matisse's paintings, including The Moroccans (1916) and Red Studio (1911). Although often compared with Florine Stettheimer, McEneaney makes her own individual, contemporary statement and takes the viewer beyond the immediate subject to universal considerations about art.

--Anne Fabbri