The painter Sara Palleria was born in Rome, where she lives and works. She received her degree in Education Sciences and still works in this research field in parallel to her artistic career, with reference to the world of colour linked to the psychology of emotions. She collaborates with various institutions in the visual arts sector and runs education courses on images and colour laboratories.
Her large-scale oils on canvas stagger the viewer for their intrinsic beauty and use of colour and nuances of texture and energy. She loves to paint all that “the eye thinks it sees.” In her artistic statement, Sara explains “The crossing of colour, alternating between heaven and earth, between light and dark … the expression of colours and materials … all that seems to be… and instead becomes something else, where colours and the earth slip away and cling to uncertain boundaries in the nature of the underlying human journey”. In recent years her abstract expressionism has become more complete, the space of the canvas refers to inner journeys that the artist has taken drawing out a timeless reality that is vividly concrete.
In the use of light and colour Sara Paleria suggests a hint of a background and foreground, yet it is undecipherable with its uncertain boundaries of nature and imagination. It is also in the titles that Sara Palleria gives to her works, that can be both humorous, cynical and certainly poetic, that she also gives the viewer a clue to the canvas’s significance, beyond that which we imagine for ourselves, Gli uomini nella rete (Men on the internet), Pioggia Estiva (Summer rain), Riflessi d’esate (Summer reflections) or Isola di vetro (Glass island). Furthermore, “the expressionism of colours and materials, remind us that nothing is peaceful in nature and it unleashes forces with which man is to be measured. Especially in the case of this artist, who lives in constant research, in constant tension. These works by Sara Palleria, as indeed for most of contemporary art, are not a point of final destination, but rather a fundamental choice to work with more changes, ideas and projects”. (Alberto Toni)
The painting technique of artist Sara Palleria is characterized by a preference for dark colors, or at least earth tones. Above all, she has an intense love for highlighting (which doesn’t always turn out as she would like, especially when she paints with tight deadlines). She paints, whenever possible, by layering chosen colors (oil and oil only) and immediately subtracting or, at least, waiting a few hours before subtracting. She performs a subtraction using spatulas of various sizes, either partially or completely, ensuring that the initially thickly applied color, with various brushes and tools, is later lightened to highlight and bring forth certain areas of light that will define boundaries and volumes. Once the chosen area or areas of the painting have dried and emerged, she paints over them with a lighter layer and repeats the same process until she achieves the desired brightness or darkness that she finds interesting. The challenge of working in this manner, despite the use of drying agents, is that oil, the wonderful oil, requires long drying times, and if she speeds up or delays the subtractive process, it deviates from her original intent.