In this oil painting on a wedge-shaped panel, the artist has reinterpreted a section from The Hunt of the Unicorn, which was produced at the end of the 15th century and is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Cloisters. In this image, a ceramic bust adorned with a red garment sits centrally before a tapestry filled with colorful foliage. Along the sides, ornamental vines have been painted in red and green.

This series of artworks finds the artist continuing to explore the inner world of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Cloisters—a set of seven tapestries made of silk, wool, and metal yarns that were made in the Netherlands between 1495 and 1505. Painted on her signature wedge-shaped panels, Harrison approaches this “Unicorn Tapestry” series much like her plein-air paintings.

Both working in and subverting the tradition of plein-air landscape painting, Sarah Esme Harrison’s art asks us to interrogate who is looking and from what perspective. Packed with naturalist imagery, her paintings take the form of wedge-shaped panels, prompting viewers to move around them in an exploratory way.