Five on the First

October 2025
Sally Jerome

“Vegetation intersects with architectural forms in my paintings to create psychological and sociological symbols. I am interested in public places where people consciously and unconsciously share space and time, how they represent the way we live and feel and how generations build upon one another. As I walk around New York City, I am amazed that anything is able to grow in such a seemingly uninhabitable place, whether it be a weed on the sidewalk or a giant Sycamore tree. Throughout my lifetime, the city has become increasingly unaffordable and difficult for people to live in. Many have left. Many are opting to not have children. The humorist, Fran Lebowitz has famously said “No one can afford to live in New York. Yet, eight million people do. How do we do this? We don't know.” The resilience, tenacity and mystery of city plant life  is echoed by that of the working people. 

I study plants, walls, fences and cement to identify patterns and rhythms within surfaces and structures.  I take my studying further through painting, incorporating imagination and improvisation along the way. Breaking forms into areas of dots, lines, prisms, or tubes of texture, I discover and celebrate the order within each object and invite the viewer in to look closely. My attraction to objects is fueled by unconscious impulses and religious archetypes and themes,  particularly those regarding human kinds’ relationship to nature and vegetation as a symbol of resurrection and immortality. As I look and as I paint, I seek sanctity and wonder in an increasingly atheistic, irreverent world.”

CV