Sarah Arnold

LA County on a Cloudy Day, 2000

Oil on canvas

11 x 14”

Sarah Arnold, a fine arts graduate of California State University, Long Beach, has been painting urban landscapes across Southern California for nearly a decade. Much of her work features older buildings or neighborhoods that, thanks to years of neglect and vandalism, have fallen into varying states of decay. Arnold is drawn to these scenes because of their visual character and the sense of fading history that they convey, in a region often derided by outsiders as having no history. But Arnold's' work is more than an objective record of spaces that will disappear; they are more than snapshots taken before the wrecking ball swings. Her paintings are executed on site and reflect her immediate interpretation of the scene, not precise representations. The scale of the paintings, almost all done in oils, varies widely but is always dictated by the scene itself. As a body of work, they are united by Arnold's interest in her native Southern California's rapidly disappearing ties with its past, as it heads into an uncharted future.