Sara Stites, Venom Lack, 2025, Gouache, spray paint and ink on inkjet print, 96 x 36 inches, $3000.

By layering these components, I explore the interplay between spontaneity and structure, preservation and transformation, and the shifting relationship between personal mark-making and the environments that shape it. The projected drawings originate as organic, uninhibited marker "scribbles" in my notebooks—forms that emerge instinctively, often inspired by nature. These sketches are a constant in my practice, created when I’m away from the studio and later integrated into paintings alongside realistic, geometric, or comical elements. For this series, I used a wallpaper-like background derived from a photograph of a wall in my studio, over which I projected enlarged, cropped images of drawings from my notebooks.The background image is a record of a personal archive: plants I collected on walks, used in drawings, and later pinned to my studio wall. When I changed studios, I photographed this evolving collection as a way of preserving its presence. - Sara Stites

Sara Stites (b. 1950) is an American painter and photographer known for creating imagined narratives that draw upon the complex relationship between the internal and external worlds, calling upon personal history and thoughts and emotions in response to current events and the pull of desire. A native New Yorker, Stites received her BFA from Syracuse University in 1972 and MFA from Pratt Institute in 1976. A crucial part of her childhood was spent in Puerto Rico, where she witnessed the break up of her parent’s marriage. This early experience awakened an interest in exploring “power politics” on an intimate level in her art.