Sarah Nordean

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Sarah Nordean, “I Can’t Live Without You,” 2019

acrylic on panel, 20” x 24” (photo by Jeremy Pavka)

Calgary artist Sarah Nordean makes vibrant and intriguing work. Combining ink, acrylic paint, pencil crayons and collage elements onto paper and panel, she creates paintings and drawings that are as clever as they are dazzling. 

Nordean uses repetitive marks to generate tension between the meticulous and the intuitive. When viewed from afar, her obsessively constructed patterns expand into wonderfully layered and complex compositions. In more intimate proximity, these same marks reveal distinctive characteristics, complementary colourations and undulating rhythms. 

While surprisingly diverse, her recent works connect seamlessly through shared colour palettes and organic forms. Despite their immediate abstraction, they can be read as geographical or biological maps.

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Sarah Nordean, “Everything’s Fine,” 2020

coloured pencil and acrylic on mineral paper, 28”x 40” (photo by Jeremy Pavka)

Her works on paper suggest patterns of migration or things that touch on viral containment or sprawl. For example, in Everything’s Fine, which originated from an accidental spill, she combines acrylic paint with coloured pencil crayons to create a form that hangs curiously in space while also providing a topographical view. It becomes both an object and a graphic marker for time, labour and obsession. 

As with other works, this drawing pulsates and shimmers, rolls and shivers, maybe even winks or hums. But, ultimately, it moves across the surface in a seductive and undulating way. It’s definitely not static. Burnt orange floods the plains, pools of dark purple dangle luxuriously, and the topography is staked out with meticulously penciled trails.

Similarly, three paintings on panels – Entanglement, Wave Function and I Can’t Live Without You – develop enticing micro and macro relationships.

Nordean’s solo show, I Can’t Live Without You, which was scheduled to run until April 9 at VivianeArt in Calgary, includes works spanning 2015 to 2020. The gallery closed recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A virtual opening is planned for 6 p.m. on Friday, March 27. 

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Sarah Nordean, “Wave Function,” 2020

acrylic on panel, 20”x 24” (photo by Jeremy Pavka)

Nordean, who teaches at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, offers a refreshing  homage to Pointillism and Op Art. Her optical play, joyful and genuinely affecting, only becomes apparent when you stand intimately with each work. She departs brilliantly from Pointillism in that her effects are not only based on contrasting colours (how they blend optically at a distance) but in how she uses pattern. A subtle shift in pattern, for example, can introduce a line that would not otherwise exist. 

Although Nordean plays with optics and illusions, her paintings are not eye tests, colour charts or perceptual games. Colour, its intensity and its tonality, is relational, with contrasts used for psychological affect, optical effect and cultural association. Her work is laden with laborious marks, yes, but feels ephemeral and delicate. It’s a curious contrast that sparks magic. ■ 

I Can’t Live Without You was scheduled at VivianeArt in Calgary for March 13 to April 9, 2020. Like many galleries, VivianeArt has closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is holding a virtual opening at 6 p.m. on Friday, March 27 via Instagram Live and YouTube Live.

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