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Total Recall: Some recent works by Sara Pedigo: 1) TS 105 (Tiny-Smalls series, oil on panel, 3.25"x2", 2011) 2) Living Room with Tent (oil on canvas, 24"x36", 2011)

Painter Sara Pedigo creates ctional realities from individual moments and universal truths

Memory Gardens

38 | folio weekly | october 25-31, 2011

eminiscence can be a tricky thing. Sentiment and fantasy in uence the truth, and real events are colored by nostalgia, joy and loss. Whether we are carried along by our reveries or chased by ghosts can, at times, seem as arbitrary as the act of dreaming itself. Sara Pedigo evokes her own past by blending experiences like colored paints on canvas. e St. Augustine-based artist renders her world a place where families inhabit beaches, picnics and living rooms, those classic signi ers of rest and relaxation. Yet there is a palpable haze of longing over Pedigos scenes of domestic tranquility. ese places she describes as ctional realities are like eerie postcards, themselves a byproduct of the painters mixed timelines and hybrid places. In a way, I am a hopeless romantic, admits the 30-year-old Pedigo. So I guess Im romanticizing or idealizing this family structure. But not in a grandiose way more in the mundane. What could have been a typical, routine day somehow becomes the day you always remember. Her recent piece, Living Room with Tent (oil on canvas, 2011), is indicative of Pedigos celebration of these most basic moments, as if a page fell from her scrapbook and somehow came to life in oils. In the foreground, a bespectacled man sits in an easy chair, his focus directed to the open book in his lap. To his le is a room within a room, a childs unoccupied fortress thats been created from a blanket draped along a green rope. In the background, a young girl in a red dress seems to be issuing orders into a tin-can telephone. e activity in this scene is focused most on the mother, kneeling before her child, with her back to the viewer. e moment is rendered in thick swaths of color, as squares of white light add cohesion and vibrancy to the shadowy foreground. Pedigo explains the composition is actually harvested from three separate photographs that were taken years apart. Upon re ection,

it appears her selection process is based as much on bittersweet tribute as on function of design. My mother was rst diagnosed with brain cancer when I was in the rst grade, explains Pedigo, and while she survived for longer than anyone could have imagined, I sort of grew up watching her deteriorate. Witnessing her mother lose her sense of identity seemed to strengthen Pedigos skills at harnessing her own memory. By the time her mother died, Pedigo was in her mid-20s and had graduated from Flagler College with a BA in ne arts. I think theres something mystical

information that never actually had to happen to be part of that painting. For the past decade, Sara Pedigo has been honoring her own calling as a painter. A er receiving an MFA from UMass in 07, she returned to Northeast Florida and her alma mater, as an assistant professor at Flagler. Pedigo has appeared in more than 60 solo and group exhibits, including many in Manhattan and New England. She cites Lars Elling, Alex Kanevsky and Sangram Majumdar as current artists she admires, yet is just as quick to praise the work of her fellow faculty members. like

In a way, I am a hopeless romantic, admits the 30-yearold Pedigo. So I guess Im romanticizing or idealizing this family structure. But not in a grandiose way more in the mundane. What could have been a typical, routine day somehow becomes the day you always remember.
about seeing photographs of her. Even though she was alive into my 20s, theres something mythical about her. Pedigos paintings have become a tacit and real way to sustain her relationship with her mother and loved ones, an alchemy that transforms loss into beauty. Seeing her in these photographs, especially the ones when she herself was in her 20s, is a way for me to know someone without ever really knowing them. e rest of Pedigos work can be equally engaging, as the viewer is coaxed into these common scenes and captivated by what is actually a deceptive form of realism. Painting seems like the perfect medium for this kind of invention, Pedigo says, explaining how she fuses time, emotion, color and reverie into one uni ed dreamscape. Looking at these images can seem like they came from one scene, but I can actually invent all sorts of Patrick Moser and Leslie Robison, and even that of her students. is is my h year teaching and Ive now witnessed a whole generation graduate, Pedigo says. A er Ive worked with the same students over the course of a few years, it inspires me to keeping working and reminds why I even make art. Pedigos work is presently featured at St. Augustines Plum Gallery. In November, she is showing at Cabeth Cornelius new C Gallery. Yet for all of her skill at mapping her life in her art, Pedigo nds her subject matter distracting. Half the time when I am working on something new, I will wonder if it is the cheesiest thing I have ever done or a total masterpiece, she laughs, adding, but maybe it can be both!
Dan Brown dbrown@folioweekly.com