SARAH SUTTON was born in the Appalachian coal mining region of Northeastern Pennsylvania and

grew up in a town that that rested over flooded anthracite coal mines, dotted by coal breakers

and culm piles. Influenced by her early experiences, she creates information landscapes that center

on ecologies. Within the monochrome layering, the present is a palimpsest of the past and life is

symbiotic and interdependent; from the banal to the monumental.

Source material comes from zoomed in paint blobs, snippets of ink stains, digital glitches, headlines,

internet searches, botanical research, stills from vintage news reels on YouTube, family trees,

popular ephemera such as magazines, 60’s suburban ready-made house catalogues and ads for

DDT found in thrift shops, estate sales, on craigslist and eBay. Much like the process of editing a film,

multiple images are collated, but then compressed, layered and collapsed into a loose narrative.

The act of compressing multiple images into the one frame of the painting becomes a focus. 

Processes include drawing, digitally layering, AI training, as well as analogue models and contraptions that the

artist designs. But ultimately the act of painting unifies. Sutton manipulates the visual overload into a

painting space using composition and mark-making to create worlds within worlds that slowly

unfold upon active viewing.

A question of painting as asked by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari is whether the hand

or the ‘manual’ can keep up with the optical. This question drives her insistence on painting as

medium.