Sara Gately

Sara Gately is a Boston based 2D Visual Artist and Elementary Art teacher who has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the greater New England area. Gately has lived with chronic inflammatory arthritis for the last twenty years, causing regular pain, swelling and loss of range of motion to all of her major joints. Gately's prognosis is eventual paralysis. Despite her condition and possible partly due to it, Gately is a prolific artist tackling both abstract and realistic works. Gately creates art using traditional and "street" mediums, using stretched canvasses that are adorned with oil based paint markers. In the last four years, Gately has been primarily focused on creating a series of large scale animal portraits. Gately's goal in producing the animal portraits is to inspire empathy in the viewer.

Response to creative prompt: "When I look in the mirror, I see..."

Gately creates abstract self portraits that address her issues with chronic illness, often representing her arms in a purposefully disfigured manner, yet creating wings to compensate for the disfigurement. In her work, Gately represents herself as powerful, colorful and provocative in order to grapple with intense feelings of depression, fatigue and physical helplessness. the piece submitted is intended to demonstrate her struggle with her condition.