Sarah McEneaney: A Particular Place in the World

Sarah McEneaney’s art is singular and unique in its focus on the everyday existence of the artist. Living in the middle of the very busy and complicated city of Philadelphia, she has created a lifestyle of almost monastic discipline as an artist. McEneaney is also an activist and community leader including the formation of the Callowhill Neighborhood Association in 2001, and the co-founding of the Reading Viaduct Project in 2003.

She works mostly in egg tempera, and her work is raw and direct, a slow moving autobiographic investigation of the nature of her life, and our life. In that way her paintings are very universal and profound. 

She has shown her work in major galleries and museums for the last 40 years, including an extensive retrospective in 2004 at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the university of Pennsylvania. She is included in major collections including Philadelphia Museum of Art,[2] Mills College Art Museum,[3] the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,[4] Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Woodmere Art Museum  in Philadelphia.