Megan Abrahams writes about the work of Sarah Cain whose installation The Imaginary Architecture of Love was recently on view at the Contemporary Art Museum (CAM), Raleigh, North Carolina.

Abrahams writes: "[Cain's] work encompasses the range from gestural, loose and playful marks to controlled repeated lines and shapes that define sections of composition, like measures or bars of music. Tightly defined, carefully rendered circles, large X’s or other repeated motifs may dominate the surfaces—framing areas in a deliberate way… While her painting conveys spontaneity, she approaches it with serious intensity and careful forethought. The work is largely improvised, but Cain prepares a material list and thinks about the space for months before beginning a project. Even so, she notes, a sense of urgency makes the work really come alive. 'I want it to be immediate. I want to be in the present tense and for the viewer to have to emotionally and physically take it on. People can just walk by paintings fast in a museum. There’s sort of this tomb-like feeling to objects. But with a work on site that’s engaged and made right there, you enter viewing them in the same space as (they were made), so it’s a real immediate experience.'"