C24 Gallery is pleased to announce our first exhibition of work by Sarah Leahy. Her work is rooted in the idea of presence-the vivid sensation one gets from being connected to the sights, sounds, and smells of a particular place. Her work emotes what she calls, "...a quiet luminosity and tactile presence, capturing people, places and the light within… People, spaces, landscape or cityscape, the images are from everyday life and are neither sentimental nor voyeuristic. They are straightforward, presenting particular moments to experience, this invites the viewer to appreciate their own individual context and response."
Leahy's unique practice entails rubbing and contouring layers of black india ink onto sanded plexiglass. Working only with her hands, sandpaper, and ink-saturated paper towels, she achieves a range of textures in her realistic imagery giving it an abstract feel, from thick and velvety to nearly transparent and ghostly. Working from her own reference photos, Leahy develops images that seem to be embedded in their materiality, brought to life by illumination, making tangible the sense of connection to something greater than ourselves while finding beauty in the most ordinary things.
