None of the large-scale pieces in the exhibition have titles because the artist wants the experience of the installation as a whole to evoke the possibility of contemplation, without the interference that labels would provide. Similarly, the life-size scale of each piece and its simple composition of vigorous swatches of black or white paint against an uncomplicated ground lend a monumental atmosphere to the gallery. At first glance, the work resembles a series of totemic figures, like something found on Easter Island or at Stonehenge: the paintings could be the repository of something primal, pure, and unmediated by the "finish" of civilization. Indeed, in this installation, the works' interplay nearly elicits palpable emotional force as the paintings ricochet off each other. In any event, to experience the work is to witness and be part of something awesome, full of grandeur, and imbued with natural spectacle, like Yosemite. 

At the same time that Bachrodt builds up these monumental images, she undercuts them. While it may not be readily apparent, the grounds of some of the images are paper; to varying degrees, the artist has painted over dress patterns. The paper has been purposely left untreated and, in places, has begun to curl up from the ground. The effect is one of deterioration and the passage of time. In other works, the artist mixes sand into her pigment. Symbolically, the sand, like the flaking paper, also alludes to the inexorable passage of time. Think of sand through an hourglass. 

Ultimately, these references to the passing of time thwart the timeless and monumental quality of the work built up through sheer size and simple and energetic brushstrokes; but this does not represent an inconsistency on Bachrodt's part. Instead, it presents, in stark black and white, the natural processes the work embodies. Furthermore, it aligns the viewer in the scheme of nature; it reinforces man's mortal puniness in the face of the grandeur which preceded him for millions of years. In this sense, Bachrodt's work resembles the work of the German artist Caspar David Friedrich, in which minuscule men are placed like ants in immense and sprawling landscapes. As such, Bachrodt's work serves as a corrective to ego and arrogance. It restores Paul Klee's idea of the artist as a conduit of the forces of nature. In this metaphor, creativity resides in the roots of the tree, the artist is the trunk, and the flowering branches represent the work of art. Bachrodt's work serves as an anecdote to media-driven images with their aesthetic of technologically inspired distancing and a perceptible lack of sincerity. Bachrodt's work resembles that of Matisse in the sense that both artists felt that their work possessed healing forces, that it could help sick people. 

Many sources contributed to Bachrodt's work. She made art as a child, but an art teacher's misguided comments squelched her interest for several decades. Then, faced with recovering from a personal tragedy, she decided she had to do something positive for herself and those around her. During a visit to a museum, she came across a small piece of amber jewelry. Experiencing what she later realized was surely an epiphany, she understood that whoever had fashioned this piece had wanted to bring a sense of beauty into the world. The piece, she felt, validated her own long-held belief that the human soul nurtured itself on the ineffable experience of beauty; and this gave her "permission" to begin to make art again. It was this experience that helped her face her tragedy and inspired her to make art.

Bachrodt is entirely self-taught. She has learned the fundamentals of painting through long bouts of trial and error. For example, she noticed that in the brightly colored blossoms of the impatiens flower, the brightest hues were not entirely that color but rather interspersed with white. So too with the colors of her canvases. She believes that the process of painting is as important if not more so than the finished product; it is during this process that she discovers her subject, that she finds the thread of the path she has been seeking all her life. This experience correlates with her spiritual conviction that it is the search for beauty that is central, and that one can only catch momentary glimpses of it; but it is important to keep trying, to keep pushing toward it. Thus, her work evidences the dignity of manual labor, of sincerity, purity, beauty, and healing.

Bachrodt's work describes a woman's relation with nature: a woman doing what she can to transcend her immediate surroundings in a never-ending search for beauty; a woman being forever dwarfed by nature; and a woman tapping into nature's creative processes. There is no one way to describe her work: it is not Abstract Expressionist, although it could be mistaken for it; it is not abstracted from a landscape, although it could very well be. No, the work of Sarah Bachrodt forces the viewer to confront his or her mortality through life-size canvases which combine monumentality and ephemerality, product and process, bombast and grace. Bachrodt's work can best be understood as an attempt to momentarily arrest the energy of flux, give it form, feed off its centrifugal force, let others feed off it too, and send it spinning back into a cyclical orbit. She is an aesthetic physicist in her ability to correlate energy and emotions, time and materials. 

© 1997 Marquette University