Sheri Rush: Refuge

Sheri Rush is a Chicago based painter whose practice includes photography and collage.  Rush holds a BFA from Texas Christian University and a MFA from the University of Chicago. Rush’s work explores the ineradicable nature of memory and recollection, and the contemporary diminishing experience of the sublime.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Contemporary life is a virtual landscape of windows and screens. This new reality comes at some expense—we do not experience the world so much as we view it through layers and interfaces. 

My work responds to this world by exploring the relationship of personal history, landscape, the digital image and recollection. By creating large-scale paintings rooted in color, form and process I investigate the changing, contemporary experience of landscape. I use this process for personal reflection, and a means of investigating past trauma, addiction and transformation.

I begin my process by taking cell phone pictures through the windows of moving cars, trains and buses.  Using the cell phone photos as source material, I depict space, light, color and form seen through movement. Turning the paintings, I work from two directions. Vertical and horizontal drips give a sense of motion, blur forms and build space.  I simplify the reflections of lenses and windows into geometric shapes layering the translucent forms over the mark making of organic forms.  Abstracting the journey allows me to create new associations and deepen inward reflection.