CV
B.F.A Syracuse University M.F.A Pratt Institute
ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2022 Orlando Museum of Art, Florida Prize
2018 “Journey”, Under the Bridge, Miami, FL
2016 “Setup & Photograph” Hollywood Art & Culture Ctr., Hollywood, FL
2014 “DOUBLETAKE”, Art at Work, Miami FL
2010 “Scissor Kick”, Zones, Miami, FL
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
"In the Making", Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, Portland, ME
“The Bright Side”, Carver Hill Gallery, Camden, ME
2023
“Littles”, Moss Galleries, Falmouth, Maine
“Decoding the Domestic”, Maine Museum of Photographic Arts, Portland, Maine
“Abstracted”, Hollywood Art & Culture Center, Hollywood, FL
“Down the Sugar Hole”, Cove Street Arts, Portland, Maine
2022
“BluPrnt” Show, Bridge Red Gallery, Miami, FL
“Abstracted”, 3 Artists, Hollywood Art & Cultural Center
“Daily Muses”, Main Street Arts, Clifton Springs, NY
2021
“Artists Draw Their Studios”, Klynert Gallery, Woodstock, NY
2020
“Florida Biennial”, A&C Ctr, Hollywood, FL
“Exposed”, A&C Ctr. Hollywood, FL
2019
“Artists Draw their Studios”, Art & Culture Center, Hollywood, FL
“Life and Work of an Idea: Miami’s Art@Work and Farside Gallery in
Buenos Aires”, Colectivo Periferia, Buenos Aires
“Center to Center”, Art & Cultural Center, Hollywood
2018 “Everyday is Summer”, fountainhead 24th street space, Miami, FL
“Mutations”
2017 “Temporality”, Center for Maine Contemporary Art”, Rockland, Maine
“More Women Painting”, design sublime, Miami, FL
2015
“+1+1”, MADE/LABspace, The Satellite Show, during Art/Basel Miami
“100 Degrees in the Shade”, Design Sublime, Miami, FL
“Slideluck”, Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL
“Page & Form”, Meetinghouse gallery, Miami, FL
“I Hate Symmetry”, Light Box at Goldman Warehouse, Miami, FL
“Doubletake”, Pascal Hall, Rockport, Maine
2014 “From the fountainhead”, 65 NW 23rd St., Miami, FL
“30 Years on the Road”, Artcenter South Florida, Miami, FL
2013 “Back of Beyond”, Deering Estate at Cutler, Miami, FL
“Elaborate Webs/Striking Exploits, Museum of Art & Design , Miami FL
Online resident at the Frost Museum, Miami, FL
2011 “Woman to Woman”, BAC, Miami FL
“Xerox as a Verb”, Tomm El-Saieh Presents, Miami, FL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Salon conversation with Elle Schorr, February, 2022
VOYAGE Magazine, “Art & Life with Sara Stites”, November 15, 2018
Elisa Turner,Delicious Line, “Sara Stites: Journey Under the Bridge, 2018
hyperallergic, a view from the easel, summer, 2018
Maine Arts Journal, Sara Stites in the studio: A Journey, Summer 2018
Art New England, July/August 2017, p. 47
Will Kitson, SEYMOUR MAGAZINE, Interview, December 10, 2015
Nina Arias, Jane Hart, Chris Ingalls, 100 Degrees in the Shade: A Survey
of South Florida Art, December, 2015
COLLECTIONS
Good/Horvitz Collection
MOAD, (Museum of Art & Design) Miami, Florida
PAMM, Miami, Florida
Dr. Arturo and Liza Mosquera, Miami, Florida
Amerada Hess Corp., New York, New York
Studio statement:
Mixing representational images with improvisational abstraction is a signature of my recent work. I am not telling one story, precisely, but am describing the feeling of being within a story, one with an undecided outcome and one that is decidedly feminine.
Using visual pastiches and different styles in translucent layers, I build an architecture, an underlying structure, a thickening of experience using color and figuration. This psychologically charged landscape explores the relationship between humans and the world in an open-ended inquiry. Exotic color choices and cartoonish figuration overlay a sense of the comedic.
Eroticism, the subconscious, automatic drawing, clearly refer to surrealism. This is natural as I have always loved de Chirico, even his crazy late works. The heavy black line may come from admiration for Max Beckmann. I relate to the irreverence of Paul McCarthy and caricatures of Barry McGee. These influences, and others, are filtered through my vantage point of growing up in midcentury America, an observer, anti-hero, survivor.
“I’m not interested in ‘abstracting’ or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it – drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea.” Willem de Kooning