Sarah Hickey

Lust for Life Gallery

In self, we trust  2012   95 x 160 cm  oil & mixed media on canvas

My fascination with the Brisbane based artist, Sarah Hickey, began when an acquaintance referred me to her work, believing that it would hold my interest. And indeed it did. I followed her on Facebook after looking at her work, and have followed her progress since.

When this assignment was introduced to me I had no doubt that the artists show I wanted to visit was Hickey’s, and I researched, hoping that she had a current body of work on display. And to my great luck, found that her show “Tabernacle of Skin” was on display at the Café-Tattoo-Gallery “Lust for Life” in Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley.

I planned my visit to arrive at the gallery on Sunday the 15^th of September, driving in after a Sunday breakfast. On arrival to the gallery, I was struck by the first few paintings visible from the street. The first thing I noticed was how wrong my assumption of the scale of the paintings was, online to in the flesh. The beautiful paintings had an ethereal quality to them, but that might have been the hyped up mental image that I created for them. The canvases were also quite a bit larger than I was expecting them to be.

Another thing I wasn’t expecting was the medium used in Hickey’s paintings. In 2011 I contacted her on Facebook for an assignment to ask her what sort of medium she used in her work. I asked this because in a majority of her work there is fine floral detail in her paintings, and when she captions them, she lists them as acrylic, oil and mixed media. When asked, she said that to create the detail she uses spray paint over lace to get a sort of faded wallpaper effect. Up close in personal, what I wasn’t expecting was what appeared to be gold or brass leaf in some of her paintings. It was a pleasant surprise because I had always wondered where the majesty and richness came from in the paintings.

As my Mother, Father and Sister and self ordered drinks from the coffee bar; I noticed the tattoo studio upstairs and noticed that there was a strong connection between the theme of the establishment and the feel of her paintings. Hickey uses bold black lines and female figures in pinup style as is seen in some tattoo work. It seemed a very appropriate place to keep the style together to make the shop entwined with her work.

In essence, it was a highly valuable visit for me because of the place she holds in my respect for artists.

Sabrina Luton