Favorite Artist: Kay Sage

For my free form blog entry last week I mentioned that in addition to Rene Magritte, Vladimir Kush and Kay Sage are some of my favorite artists. Since I already talked about Kush, I shall elaborate on Kay Sage. During senior year of high school, my art teacher asked us to do reports on various artists from a list he had compiled and Sage was one of them. I had never heard of her or her work before but after looking her up I recognized similarities within her art aesthetic that had been reflected in my own work as well. I am drawn towards surrealist art, which I think Sage represents in many of her paintings.

Although her work drastically contrasts that of Kush and Magritte in terms of color palette, the conceptual aspects are very similar. Sage uses more neutral colors which create a bleak tone that, if you've read any personal information about her, exposes her similar lifestyle. I like how most of Sage's paintings tend to be geometric and whimsical at the same time, as shown in the image above. The objects still take on the appearance of "other-worldly" while also retaining recognizable traits from the real world.

Sage's The Passage

My Version in Sketch Form

I tried to replicate this image once right after i had become interested in Sage's work. Again I was drawn towards the combination of geometric lines and shapes with more natural curves of the hair and arch of the back of the woman figure. Although her face is not shown, you can feel the sadness within her solemn posture and vastness of the repetitive background. I admire Sage's work for attempting to break the boundaries between the real and fantasy worlds as many surreal artists do. Although her paintings seem simple in elements, they are much more complex in terms of the lines, shapes, and space Sage chooses to emphasize.