Sarah Rooney’s paintings pivot between control and chance, personal experience, instinct and expression. They appear as much touched, or inhaled and exhaled, as painted. Her technical use of under-painting unearths the image and brings out a sense of depth that makes our gaze hover between form and space, background and foreground. Rooney sensitizes our ‘eye’ by applying specific and random points of color to guide us through her idiosyncratic logic of near and far, holding on and letting go. Her work conveys a sense of tension and ease; some paintings seem to open, others seem to compress. Others do both via their layers of opacity and transparency working in correspondence and in flux. Rooney’s focal shifting of visual elements entices our vision into a slow stimulating rhythm, a rhythm that gives these paintings the capacity to move us.           - Susie Major

Biographical Notes

Sarah Rooney studied at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London England before obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal (1997) and a Master of Fine Arts from York University in Toronto (2001). She has lectured in Visual Arts at York University, University of Toronto, and the University of Ottawa since 2008. A recipient of a 2011 Canada Council Art Bank acquisition, Rooney's paintings and videos have been exhibited in Canada and the US and her paintings are held in private collections there as well as, Germany and England. Sarah Rooney was born in South Africa and spent her formative years in Brazil. She now lives and works in Montréal.