This Happened is a storyboard, a series of tableau vivant-like paintings grappling with collective (racial) responsibility and Sandy’s feeling culpable for white people’s behavior towards black and brown people, spanning from 1500 to the present day. In 2015, Sandy’s life returned full circle back to making art, after spending many years as a doctor. That experience brought a sense of humanity and knowledge of the human body, that she would not have had without her experience as a physician.

“One of my principle intents – to discuss that the brutality of racism has been intractable for centuries – rings even more relevant now,” said Sandy Moore. “This motivates me to continue to share This Happened. These paintings are not literal, historical, or polemical, but they try to show how delusional and intractable the racist behavior of whites has been.”

Moore continues, “The gulf between what our eyes see and the images we are able to make is vast – maybe because of how hard we look away from what we see. And we don’t listen so well, either. As a doctor and an artist, I have to hope that our acquired, willful deaf-blindness can be reversed. If together we see honestly, pay humble attention, and listen hard, then observation can combust into meaning, and meaning can point our way. Together, we are less lost. In the current struggle, who doesn’t want beauty and compassion to triumph?”

This Happened will be on view in the Balter Gallery, concurrent with Eternal Becoming, an exhibition of ceramic sculptures and Fire Paintings by Tony Moore in the Gillette Gallery. The Galleries at Garrison Art Center are open

Tuesday – Friday, Sunday, 10 – 5 pm, and Saturday, 12 – 5 pm.

​For Additional Information
To learn more about Sandy Moore, visit www.sandymooreartist.com. For information about exhibitions, classes, and other programs at the Garrison Art Center, please visit garrisonartcenter.org or call 845.424.3960. Join the conversation via Instagram @GarrisonArtCenter.