Sara Edwards.
Ms. Edwards is an emerging visual artist engaging symbolism, scale and color in abstract painting. Her work is concerned with conveying memory, trauma, and the aftermath of human large scale and intimate conflict. Further, Sara’s artistic arc coheres: the rigorous formalism of the fine arts; the freedom and revolution of global graffiti practices; and the poetic imaginaries of mythology, dreams and the unconscious.
Drawing on the history of expressionist painters, as well as street artists, highly textured marks powerfully engage emotion, landscapes of pure color, and rhythmic, repeating forms. Motifs occur — surfboards, mystic languages, birds, boxes, women’s bodies — but never as stable symbols; instead, they evolve as experiential moments within Ms. Edwards’ developing pictorial system. Her paintings materialize through oil, graphite, acrylic and oil pastels.
Ms. Edwards studied with the late Graham Nickson; and also, at the Art Students League under Peter Bonner, Pat Lipsky and Michael Bourbon in New York City.
Concurrently Sara Edwards achieved a PhD at UCLA in Social Sciences & International/ Comparative Education. She worked thereafter as an ethnographer & qualitative researcher in Los Angeles, Hawai’i, American Samoa and NYC. Her research on youths’ transcultural practices is published in some 15 articles in top social science journals.
Sara lives and paints in New York City.