Artist Sarah McKenzie went to prison for her latest works

Sarah McKenzie | Ray Mark Rinaldi, The Denver Post
"McKenzie is known — and has exhibited — far and wide for her precision renderings of built spaces, like residences, commercial structures, construction sites, abandoned factories and more. The paintings are hyper-realistic, and without humans present, yet they still have a soft and personal quality that makes them both recognizable and alluring.
 
But when she decided three years ago to begin painting prisons, she knew she needed to go deep with the research and alter her usual process. She could not just show up at high-security state facilities, take a few photos, bring them back to her Boulder studio and recreate them in oil and acrylic. She had to work her way inside.
 
And for the series of paintings now on display at the Museum of Art in Fort Collins, that project took her down a path that changed both the direction of her career and her perspective on the art world itself. She did get inside, and she gained a new understanding of how art can impact everyone who makes it, especially the incarcerated people she met along the way."
 
Read on the Denver Post
February 12, 2024