Crying in the Middle Seat

Sara Jean Odam
Crying in the Middle Seat, 2023
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist.

Sara Jean Odam is a Las Vegas-based painter. Most of these artworks come from Good Grief, a series of family portraits painted in the aftermath of a tragedy. “All the emotion is buried beneath the thing the sitter is occupying their time with while being painted (knitting, working, watching Parks and Rec episodes on their phone),” she explains. “We were surrounded by several other family members while I painted [Mom], everyone sharing space but not really talking about anything ‘real’ as my niece and nephew would say later. It's a simple painting I think, but super loaded for me.” Her depictions of tears were part of a quest to “reframe my attitude towards crying” by using the teardrop shape as a compositional element. “Why not play with my tears? So I decided to use the motif of a tear to try out different ways of building a painting.”
(DKS)