NEW PAINTINGS

Dolby Chadwick Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition featuring new paintings by Ada Sadler. Since 1996 Sadler focused on painting unoccupied chairs, finding their emptiness both personally and symbolically compelling.

Based on photographs Sadler has taken, she is not trying to create a photorealist painting but instead uses them as a literal base. The images are developed and clarified, multiple and complicated memory associations are evoked and subtly contribute to the quality of the paintings. The empty chair is rich in symbolism, simultaneously creating a presence and an absence.

Each painting is created with an extremely fine brush applying thin layers of oil, giving the final painting a luminously smooth finish. Sadler’s scale is similarly detailed, each painting in this exhibit varies between six and nine inches square. Her interpretation of the everyday object is extraordinary, taking on very personal spaces amidst the familiar places she uses as inspiration.

Ada Sadler currently lives in San Francisco. She received her BFA from the University of Kansas in 1976. Her work has been exhibited at the Triton Museum of Art, California Museum of Art, The Haggin Museum, and is also held in private and public collections throughout the United States. This is her fifth solo exhibit at the Dolby Chadwick Gallery.