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Primarily a painter and printmaker, Sally L'Estrange claims a strong identification with the various populist movements in art history, proceeding from, for example, the ex-veto tradition of Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Italian art, up to and including Pop Art. This was evident in her most recent exhibition, One Year, although more patent links with Pop Art have been demonstrated graphically in previous exhibitions.
One Year witnessed a relatively dramatic change of direction in L'Estrange's art making. Firstly her scale has shifted to yield far smaller and denser compositions. Secondly, the format has been greatly simplified. This is apparent if we consider the more complex relations between paintings and, for example, the files of press clippings that the artist has constructed for previous shows, or even the diptych format which she has employed in the past.
An artist often misread as being intensely political and/or expressionistic, it would seem that these designations are not especially helpful in an understanding of her aims. As L'Estrange comments, "I am interested in the clash between meaning and empathy, or the possibility of public and private relationships within an image". The tension generated by such a clash was possibly more identifiable in the earlier diptyches, for example, where L'Estrange juxtaposed an overtly recognizable image of a public figure like Aldo Moro, with another image, bearing a meaning which was much more poetic and personal, and apparently more closed than the public one. Yet we still find a latent tension, albeit down played, and one that functions dynamically, in the paintings of One Year. It is as though L'Estrange has been able to abandon her previous complexity of format, whilst retaining the possibility of the clash