{"id":3308,"date":"2026-09-12T05:37:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T05:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/sara-anstis-maps-myth-and-memory-in-soft-pastel-at-olney-gleason\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T05:37:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T05:37:00","slug":"sara-anstis-maps-myth-and-memory-in-soft-pastel-at-olney-gleason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.echoartfoundation.com\/es\/sara-anstis-maps-myth-and-memory-in-soft-pastel-at-olney-gleason\/","title":{"rendered":"Sara Anstis maps myth and memory in soft pastel at Olney Gleason"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Pastels<\/em>, Sara Anstis turns soft pastel on paper into a stage for elusive stories, folding mythology, nursery rhymes, and art historical echoes into small-scale scenes. Presented at Olney Gleason, the solo show leans into the artist\u0019s recent shift toward muted, autumnal tones, a marked contrast to her earlier, more neon-inflected palette. The works look closely to medieval and early Renaissance sources while maintaining the hazy charge of dreams.<\/p>\n

Art history, nursery rhymes, and quietly surreal acts<\/h2>\n

The drawings teem with curious activities: a figure appears subsumed by a bookcase; another is wrapped in a green sleeping bag beneath a makeshift tent; a bathtub is fitted with oars; sleepers stack like pancakes. In \u001cThe Horse Rider\u001d (2026), stoic three-quarter profiles reflect expressions seen in 15th-century works by Fra Angelico and Hans Memling. \u001cThe Painter\u001d (2026) nods to the medieval convention of saints gathered at a holy figure\u0019s feet, here reimagined as women looking reverently toward a female artist and the drawn likeness of a woman\u0019s form. Another recurring animal motif connects to Leonardo da Vinci and \u001cLady with an Ermine.\u001d<\/p>\n

Maternity threads through the exhibition, influenced in part by Paula Modersohn-Becker\u0019s 1906 \u001cSelf-Portrait at 6th Wedding Anniversary.\u001d Anstis\u0019s interest in mythology and subjectivity surfaces across portraits and more overtly narrative scenes: in \u001cThe Milkman\u001d (2026), disembodied arms loop a small dog around a woman\u0019s shoulders, while \u001cLachrymatories\u001d (2025) shows a pensive woman walking past numerous tiny vials once thought to collect mourners\u0019 tears in ancient Greece and Rome. The nursery rhyme \u001cTen in the Bed,\u001d sometimes sung as \u001cThree in the Bed,\u001d hovers over \u001cThree heads in a bed\u001d (2025).<\/p>\n

Soft pastels and the texture of dreams<\/h2>\n

Soft pastel is both symbolic and practical here, building atmospheres where edges blur and stories stay suggestive. \u001cAn intimate sense of touch that charges her scenes with introspective intensity,\u001d the gallery says. Women in these images inhabit their surroundings\u0014horseback riding, reading, painting\u0014with an air of veneration, as if each frame captured a fragment of some rite. Anstis tips her hat to the absurd and slightly cartoonish, letting irrational dream logic guide the compositions.<\/p>\n