Garvey|Simon is pleased to present Sandy Litchfield: Gently Place Me Here beginning July 1, 2023 on Artsy.net. Works will also be available for individual viewing at the gallery’s Upper West Side showroom by appointment.

Gently Place Me Here will feature a carefully curated collection of intimate gouache and colored pencil drawings by Sandy Litchfield. There is a poetic and playful sense of place in these works on paper, inviting viewers into a world where imagination and reality intertwine. Also present is a physiological sense of slowing down, allowing for interpretation and introspection.

Lakeside vistas, ocean waves and quiet countryside offer personal moments from the artist’s life in Amherst, Massachusetts, the Adirondacks and sailing near Martha’s Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. Some of these landscapes are pushed to abstraction while others retain a foothold in direct observation. The sun’s shifting position alters the appearance and silhouette of a tree, shadow or beam of light and creates a harmonious symphony of color and form.

These drawings are an inquiry into the suchness of place; its qualia, composition, and affect. Gently Place Me Here is about wanting to be placed, as in being-a-place. Landscape drawing situates a place in me, where I can both taste it and tinker with it. This immersive (and gentle) activity brings me closer to the strange and familiar places I long to belong to.

(Sandy Litchfield)

Sandy Litchfield was born in New York City and now lives in Amherst, Massachusetts where she is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts’ Department of Architecture.

She received her BFA from the University of Colorado in Boulder and her MFA from UMass Amherst. In 2007 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been recognized with grants and commissions from the Metropolitan Transit Authority, Public Art for Public Schools, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Puffin Foundation. Litchfield has exhibited in numerous museums including the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, The Fitchburg Art Museum, The Portland Art Museum and The Hunterdon Museum.

Her exhibitions have been selected for review by The Brooklyn Rail, The Boston Phoenix, New American Paintings, Art New England and The Boston Globe. Her work is in the collections of the Adirondack Museum, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Cleveland Clinic, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Fidelity Investments, Fitchburg Art Museum, New Britain Museum, US State Department’s Art Bank, to name a few.