we are super excited to open 2022 with solo exhibitions of new paintings for north carolina artists jacob cooley and sarah helser. especially due to the circumstances we are living in this moment in time the need for art to comfort, provide an escape and transport is essential. both artists check the box in this catagory. jacob cooley’s dreamy highly realistic marsh paintings transcend time. you can easily image yourself floating through the reeds feeling the pull of the tide on your oars listening to the hum of the insects while watching the sun descend into the horizon. his paintings are portals to a place of stillness and absent of human presence. something we are deprived of most days. sarah helser’s multi layered mixed media paintings of birds and animals are surreal. her gleaming resined surfaces have a dream like quality opening a door into her world filled with regal birds and sparkling crystal chandeliers surrounded by butterflies, fish and dragonflies. sarah’s compositons lead your eye from one fantastic image to the next. her doodles providing an unknown language sending beautiful messages through symbols. the cumulation results in a fantasy world only an artist can dream up. sarah helser sees the beauty and mystery in all things.
jacob cooley was born in 1968. he received an mfa in painting from the university of north carolina at chapel hill in 1993 and graduated in 1990 with a bfa from the university of georgia, athens. he studied at antioch college in yellow springs, ohio from 1986 to 1988. his paintings are informed by harmonious and hallowed places, landscapes about contemplation and the spirit, but also about the transient, ephemeral characteristics of light and darkness and ultimately of life. jacob cooley's work attempts to capture and hold the instant when the orange of the sun is about to completely scatter into the diffused light of dusk or the thunderclouds move to entirely obscure the horizon. cooley has received numerous awards and reviews of his work are included in major publications. his paintings are collected nationally by museums, corporations and private collectors.
sarah helser was born in high point, north carolina in 1980. she spent her formative years on a farm where she enjoyed the beauty and solitude of nature. her childhood and young adulthood has had a major influence on her creativity as an artist. sarah went on to study fine arts at the university of north carolina, greensboro, where she refined her interests by focusing on the figure and the use of alternative mediums.
sarah’s work is meant to express the beauty of the world around her, weaving together both realistic and abstract forms.
“i create each painting in the hope to reshape the familiar into the numinous and magical essence of what it carries. it is the brief glimmering speck of a dream, made permanently tangible before it is lost in the waking hours. joining the realistic with the imagined breathes harmony in the contrast and reshapes and impacts the way we see. in every piece there is a certain gravity combined with playfulness and whimsy, reflecting the seldom caught occasions of marvel in our ordinary lives. seized for a moment, the paradise of childlike imaginings are not lost but remembered, hoped for, realized and resurrected in the mind.
i paint as a way to make definite the combination of both experience and the deeply personal reflections of the imagination. i approach each painting with an openness, letting it become fully changed from any initial concept. completely understanding a narrative while i create is not important. instead i allow the imagery to lead me, a conversation that illuminates and pulls at the hidden longings and beauty of the heart. using layering and multiple mediums, each painting forms and reforms until it comes into its own organic completion. i myself am often surprised by its outcome.
i cannot capture all of the world around me, so for a brief moment i marvel in the mystery that it has captured me. they are meant to stand as physical reminders, a moment to reflect that beauty is not lost, that the dreamer and the child still exist within. they are the embodiment of these things, combined with the bittersweet gravity that years and life bring. the hope is that the pulse of these works would soften the weight, standing as a strip of gold hiding in the crease of a grey morning.”
