Boulder-based artist Sarah McKenzie paints architecture. She started with canvases of abandoned buildings in the city of Detroit in graduate school, then painted suburban sprawl on the Front Range and construction sites after moving to Colorado. Most recently, with the representation of the David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, she has exhibited works portraying the institutional spaces of galleries and museums with those paintings often showcased in the very spaces she s depicting.
“I really think about architecture as a lens through which we can understand our society, McKenzie says. If we look at what our society builds and what happens to those built structures over time, it reveals a lot about shifts in our society, our economy, our labor force and our priorities as a country.