Sarah Leahy, Plain Sense

September 15 – December 8, 2026
Opening Reception: September 15, 6:30–8 pm

Curated by Deric Carner


Yet the absence of imagination had itself to be imagined.
Wallace Stevens

EFA Gallery is thrilled to present an immersive wall painting by Sarah Leahy. Spanning 33 feet across two walls, this site-specific commission represents an intensification of Leahy's image-making practice. Rendered in black India ink directly on the white walls of the gallery, Plain Sense is, on the surface, an image of a beech grove. Leaves, branches, bramble, and trunks are drawn as if a bright light were shining through them. The landscape was painted based on a collage of photos taken near her family home several years ago. On a recent trip, Leahy noticed the trees were sick from a blight that would slowly kill them. 

The title cues us to how the artist intends us to experience the work–directly, without special elaboration or recourse to fantasy. Drawn from the Wallace Stevens poem The Plain Sense of Things, the name suggests the clarity of winter and bare life. The subject is not metaphoric, but prosaic and closely observed as a construction. It is selected to draw us into a space of experience and contemplation. The scale envelops our bodies and abstracts the logic of representation. Abstractions such as time and mortality come to the fore. Quiet viewing is the point of the work. The mark-making is direct, without sentimentality, bathing us in an image alive with our presence and the trace of an artist’s passage. 

Sarah Leahy has been a member of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts for 25 years. In 2025, Leahy had a solo exhibition at the C24 Gallery titled “Presence.” This was followed by a three-person exhibition titled “New Lands” at C24. In addition, she exhibited at the Attleboro Arts Museum in Massachusetts and at the Monira Foundation in New Jersey in 2025. 

Previously, Leahy presented eight solo exhibitions at the Kim Foster Gallery in New York between 1998 and 2015. Select other exhibitions include: The University of North Carolina, The Katonah Museum of Art, The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, The Piazza di Pietra Gallery in Rome, The Cello Gallery in London, The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, The National Academy Museum and The Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Leahy is the recipient of a grant from The New York State Foundation for the Arts in 2001. She received a Norfolk Fellowship from Yale University and a BA from Bennington College in 1977. Her work is in private collections in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Maine, Seattle, Dallas, Pittsburg, Montreal and London.

EFA Gallery is the exhibition space of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, dedicated to supporting artists at all stages of their practice and to presenting work that reflects the social, material, and political conditions shaping contemporary life. Rooted in EFA’s longstanding commitment to artists, experimentation and cultural sustainability,
EFA Gallery serves as a platform for dialogue between artistic production, public engagement and the evolving role of artists within the city.

Sarah Leahy