Maps and Legends

As Atlantans, our lives can be deeply impacted by the daily trips we take. Think of the road rage we experience on a commute to work, or the exhilaration of riding in a convertible through the Blue Ridge Mountains. The experience of travel can affect us spiritually and emotionally as well as physically. This transformative nature of travel is the subject of several new works by local artist Sarah Daly.

“Having been raised in Marietta, I’m very aware of how much our daily journeys can determine our mindset.” Sarah says. After traveling through different cities, she became aware of how deeply these journeys affect our sense of being, and not just our physical place. Her paintings are an expression of those changes we endure in our daily trips and yearly vacations. Using the figure as a starting point, Sarah layers abstracted images used in road maps to create a personal travel journal. “It would have been easy to relate the physical map of a specific place to it’s visual landscape, but I wanted to capture the relationships created between the body, its physical place and the impact these journeys have on the spiritual and mental part of our lives.” The highly textural figures evoke a sense of calm and the roads and rivers that travel down arms and along backs evoke hints of memories about ones personal journey of the soul.