Sharon Lawless explores the tension between random accidents and planned control in her paintings and collages on paper. This exhibition, which is her first with the gallery, will focus on her paper collages and a new body of wood block prints she derives from the collages.

Lawless begins each piece by randomly selecting a clipping from her vast collection of found photographs, technical drawings and diagrams and other printed material, which she adheres at random to a sheet of paper. Building from the ends or sides of this collage component Lawless arranges a “rambling linear growth that resembles the smaller diagrams contained within.” Each element in the collage has a strictly visual, and occasionally uncanny, connection to the next that derives from optical phenomena rather than a literal reading of the elements original purpose. Taking only formal appearance into consideration Lawless “draws” until she reaches the edge of the paper. This transparent additive process is evident in the final composition and results in interesting, amusing or provocative accidental relationships.

Sharon Lawless received her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA in 1974 and her MFA from the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH in 1976. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting and an NEA/SECCA Artists’ Fellowship. She lives and maintains her studio in New York, NY.