Artist Statement

My art practice delves into the complexities of our interconnected lives, embracing both the known and unknown within ourselves and others. Growing up with divorced parents, I resist choosing sides when I witness conflict, believing that both parties are worthy of love and forgiveness. As a survivor of childhood sexual assault, my work navigates the tension of risking harm while remaining vulnerable. Having had an abortion, I question through my art: If we were completely honest about ourselves with those we love and our communities, would they accept and understand us? Shame, vulnerability, mistakes, acceptance, tension, and pressure all surface in my work, revealing the rawness of human experience.

Rather than positioning myself as a source of answers, I choose to be an investigator of questions. My studio is a laboratory for exploration — a space to wrestle with the challenges of communication, often stumbling but never abandoning the effort. Whether in drawing or performance, my work documents these investigations, unraveling tightly held narratives to uncover new possibilities. For even the most carefully constructed plans cannot shield us from the unexpected.

Art-making, for me, is a sensory and tactile process. To recover a sense of aliveness, we must shift from what we think we know to what we can feel and perceive at a bodily level.

Biography

Sarah McDowell (b.1980, Berkeley, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the sisyphean task of trying to understand ourselves and each other, misunderstandings, blame, forgiveness and vulnerability.

While perhaps most comfortable drawing, Sarah also works in other mediums such as photography, performance and installation. Sarah earned a BA in visual art from the UCLA School of Art and Architecture. She also spent a year studying art, art history and art restoration in Florence, Italy at the Instituto Lorenzo de’ Medici. Over the past two decades she has studied under the artist duo rosenclaire, participating in workshops and residencies with them in both South Africa and Italy. Sarah lives with her family in rural Western North Carolina and was a 2024 North Carolina Arts Council Grant recipient.