Portrait of a Syrian Family Painting

Christine Sauerteig-Pilaar is a contemporary artist living and working in New Jersey. Her compelling and emotional artworks look to speak to the primitive side of the human existence and how that relates to modern day life. Christine focuses on the female form as her muse, mostly conjured from self-portraits, where she utilizes her body to manipulate feelings of a quiet rage within women in the more domestic interiors of lives not usually viewed as remarkable or unique. She works to search out the uniting thread of feminism in the dark spaces of suburban life, and looks to thrust the spotlight on the unsaid struggles and betrayals of women in our current society. Christine received her BFA from Parson’s School of Design in 1993, and after living in New York City, relocated to New Jersey where she has continuously experimented with mediums having stretched the limits from making her own oil paints to using shellac and iron filings to transforming her work to the mixed media technique she has developed more recently. Her current process uses graphite and charcoal, along with ink and pure pigments brushed or scratched on, along with oil and acrylic paint.