'Smoke Signals' explores female psyche - Sarasota Herald-Tribune - by Kevin Costello - 2/18/07
Sabrina Small will be showing new work at Greene Contemporary from Saturday, February 3 through Saturday, February 24, 2007. An opening reception will be held from 6 to 9 pm on Friday, February 2.
Sabrina Small's exhibition, Smoke Signals: Trying to get back to myself, will showcase Small's latest body of work that continues to explore the figure and narrative with watercolor, charcoal and pastel - on wood and on paper. This new work includes a series of small drawings and paintings - both figurative and abstract - as well as some of her largest work made to date; one being a drawing on paper called Sleepless Nights - Ode to Murakami; a diptych that measures 85 x 114 inches.
Small has developed a vocabulary of figures - predominately young women - who appear to be on a journey of some kind: traveling, waiting, struggling, connecting and sometimes retaliating. These women are strong, determined and resigned to their fate: powerful and vulnerable at once. The cityscape of Berlin, where Small lives, often inspires the backdrop for her drawings. Small's narratives are complex and multi-layered and include subplots that continuously unfold, reflecting parallel universes throughout the works. Some of the images are ghost-like, indicated only with the outline of a form or a wisp of smoke. The scale of the new work has a cinematic quality that makes it epic and monumental.
Small continues in the long tradition of artists who are strong draughtsmen. She is very much inspired by her own life experiences, as well as those around her, and is also provided with stimulus and inspiration through literature, film and music. There is often a somewhat surreal aspect to her work that connects it to the history of fantastic story-telling in art. She defines the narrative elements with a strong and confident line, then using color to create atmospheric space and light as well as to provide dimension to her composition.
Born in Philadelphia in 1968, Small now resides in Berlin, Germany having moved there from Sarasota in 2002. She holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and has exhibited extensively throughout Florida, as well as in New York, California, London, Budapest and Berlin.
Her most recent exhibition was in November, 2005 at Metamorphosis Gallery in Sarasota, Florida. There she showed drawings, paintings and hand-stitchings.