Sean Healy | Lifer
October 5 - 28, 20213
The Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Lifer, an intimate new collection of work by Sean Healy. This exhibition continues the artist’s internal battle between ego and self doubt. Populated primarily by a series of graphite drawings, the pieces in this show are a lifeline back to the artist’s first love of drawing.
The obsessive mark making in many of these works on paper along with the personal subject matter bring a new level of clarity to Healy’s work. Stripping away pretense, this stylistic shift reflects a change in the artist’s thought process, creating a more personal level of expression. This beautifully raw collection of work includes subject matter such as portraits of his newly found birth father (Zeus) or of his aging Mother (Godmother). In his skillfully emotive portraits of animals, Healy comments on consumerism, politics and the self, choosing to capture his first self portrait in Self Portrait as Dionysus, a depiction of himself as a chimpanzee. Perhaps one of his most personal works is sculptural, Baby’s Teeth displays a collection of his wife’s baby and wisdom teeth in a clinically straight line from 6” standoffs. The resulting work creates a tension between sexuality and codependency that ultimately serves to make the viewer uncomfortably aware of piercing a couples’ personal bubble. With this show Healy reminds us with sharp intensity of the pitfalls and triumphs of one life and our shared humanity.
In addition to exhibitions at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Healy has exhibited at the Betty Moody Gallery (Houston, TX), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass, CO), East/West Project, Dam, Stuhltrager/Gallery Homeland (Berlin, Germany) and The Art Gym (Marylhurst, OR). He has received several important public commissions, including the Wayne L. Morse Courthouse (Eugene, OR), Pioneer Place (Portland, OR), the General Services Administration Headquarters (Eugene, OR) and the FBI Headquarters (Houston, TX). The Elizabeth Leach Gallery has represented Healy since 1999, and in 2006 published a comprehensive catalogue on his work featuring an essay by Stephanie Snyder, director and curator of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College (Portland, OR).