Zographia - the art of Sarah Yuster

Artist's Statement: "Armed with the tenet that small, ordinary truths often illuminate larger fields, I paint with an eye towards the tension and beauty that can occur when man, technology and the natural world convene at random points.

"These images - plain, familiar, observed from common angles, are my visually transposed moments of willed isolation and affection for an inherent sense of belonging."

Sarah Yuster is a New York City artist, a woman whose images transcend gender and locale, yet seize the contemporary in slow drying oil paints, pastel and charcoal drawings.

Victory Boulevard at Dawn (1985) is her best-known piece, the vista from her neighborhood, a hill on Staten Island's North Shore looking over New York Harbor towards Manhattan. The twin towers of the World Trade Center are visible along the pre 9/11 NYC skyline (this has been printed as an offset lithograph). A companion piece called Lower Manhattan 2002 was created as part of the Firefighter's Commemorative, a project supported by the NYC Council on the Arts; the pivotal image is a life-sized portrait of an NYC Firefighter.

Landscapes, cityscapes, suburban streetscapes all appear on Yuster's canvases bearing a nod of appreciation for the familiar. High quality Giclee reproductions of her work are available.

Yuster has achieved note as a portraitist. The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery purchased her likeness of the Nobel laureate, author Saul Bellow. Portraits of other writers and scientists hang in her one woman show: Habitat's, Biophiles and Beasts, at the Staten Island Museum of Arts and Sciences including poet Diane Ackerman, and astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson (director of the Hayden Planetarium - American Museum of Natural History). One of the world's most esteemed thinkers, socio-biologist and two time Pulitzer Prize winner, Edward O. Wilson (of Harvard University) and Martha Hiatt, from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Supervisor of Animal Husbandry at the NY Aquarium, have been painted by Yuster for this exhibit, as well as many people who work in conservation, wildlife rehabilitation and environmental concerns.

Sports paintings of famous women athletes like Grete Waitz and Tegla Loroupe were exhibited with portraits of Ultramarathoner and Olympian Ted Corbitt and Allan Steinfeld (director of the NY Road runners Club) at the NYRRC and the National Distance Runners Hall of Fame. Yuster's daughter Nora, a gymnast, is portrayed, as are playground basketball stars and scenes from a city gym.

She's painted many portraits of musicians, among them Robert Mosci, the NYC pianist and singer, and her son Ian, who plays jazz saxophone.

Doctors, politicians, attorneys and unversities are frequent clients, trusting Yuster's eye for nuance and her technical ability to translate character and countenance into an eloquent image.