Separation

Sarah McEneaney  "Separation"  2001
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Sarah McEneaney is a contemporary figurative painter based in Philadelphia. She attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts which is both a school and a museum, and which recently received this piece in gift as part of a large collection of Art by Women (a.k.a the Linda Lee Alter Collection.) The artist has received numerous honors and awards including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and the Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

McEneaney is an autobiographical painter, and as such makes heavy use of self-portraiture. A devoted animal lover, many of her pieces include portraits of her beloved dogs and cats. In this piece McEneaney is separating egg yolks from their whites, in order to paint in egg tempera, one of her favored mediums, while a cat waits below. (This piece is in fact executed in egg tempera.) McEneaney may or may not also be referring to other forms of separation occurring in her life at that time.