Paradigm Gallery is pleased to present mOTHER, a solo exhibition by figurative painter Sarah Detweiler. mOTHER features 12 new vibrantly haunting works from Detweiler’s ongoing series, Hidden Mother, which adeptly subverts the portrait form and instead, focuses on a woman’s self-imposed perceptions and expectations that a mother attaches to their identity. Her evocative paintings use concealment as a way to reveal deeper truths.
The Hidden Mother series was inspired by a trend in Victorian portrait photography in which mothers concealed themselves in fabric while they held their children still for long exposure photographs. Detweiler’s images remove the children, showing only the women covered and posed alone within each frame. In this way, they are both hyper visible and hidden. While the artist used herself as the model for previous works, her new collection turns her gaze toward other women, thus expanding the view of motherhood as both a connective thread and as an experience that is unique to each individual.
Though the series has been ongoing since January 2020, mOTHER marks the first body of works where Detweiler collaboratively created the pieces with her subjects. Detweiler worked closely with her subjects to best tell their stories, intuitively translating their experiences and feelings onto the canvas. By personalizing her paintings to her subjects’ stories, their life experiences shine through the patterns and colors of the work, even as their faces are obscured. Though Detweiler knows her subjects personally, in maintaining the anonymity of her subjects, she preserves a universal relatability — the woman under the shroud could be you, your mother, your friend.
The paintings in mOTHER include hand-stitched embroidered elements that add texture and dimension, while alluding to a craftwork traditionally associated with femininity. The stitching is often only noticeable upon closer inspection, reinforcing the significance of that which is hidden in plain sight. The resulting images in this exhibition are deep, vibrant, and fantastical. They express their subjects’ ambivalence, acceptance, and embrace towards their changing roles as mothers, all while celebrating the true multiplicity of their identities.
Detweiler opens the conversation around transformation and identity, honoring each woman’s existence beyond motherhood. Her powerful images are both eerie and whimsical, cathartic and hopeful. Though the subjects are hidden on a superficial level, the coverage actually allows the artist to see more deeply, revealing them in new and beautiful light.
