Saira McLaren
Looking Through the Leaves, 2019
Cotton base sheet with linen pulp paint and
handmade paper collage
15 x 13 inches

Dieu Donné is pleased to release Looking through the Leaves, a new Paper Variables edition by Saira McLaren. Working with Master Collaborators Tatiana Ginsberg and Amy Jacobs, the artist created a variable edition of 15 works using pulp painting techniques and collage with handmade paper.

Ideas centered on the psyche and the spiritual are integral to McLaren's work. Often in her paintings, the artist creates scenes in which a figure is obscured or hidden, a motif she continued in this edition. McLaren explains, “I root my work in landscapes, both in our interior and exterior worlds. I am creating people and places that exist in our memory, imagination, dreams and in our nightmares. I use color to emote what lies beneath the surface: desire, anxiety and doubt. There is also a dark humor present, though it’s veiled in lightness and bright color. The figures in these works are both emerging into being their whole spiritual self and fading, decomposing in their physical shells.”

About the Artist

Saira McLaren is a Canadian artist living and working in the Catskills and New York City. Her work is rooted in the landscape, both the external and internal world we move through. Perceptions of reality, repressions and illusions are explored in the intersection of representation and abstraction. McLaren has mounted solo exhibitions at Sargent's Daughters in New York and has been included in group exhibitions in Toronto, Los Angeles and Dusseldorf. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, New York Magazine and TimeOut.

For more information, please visit her website:
https://www.sairamclaren.com/