Comprised of a growing collection of oil paintings. Sarah Tompkins' is concerned with exploring the role of art as a tool in psychologically processing and navigating the circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 crisis. In light of these trying times of uncertainty and upheaval, Sarah Tompkins is specifically focused on producing work that addresses our need for equilibrium by offering reliable moments of harmony, balance, and simplicity. Now more than ever, we are presented with the bare facts of our home lives, and she considers her work to be an homage to any happy, quiet moments of order and clarity we might find in this moment of forced isolation.
Artist biography
Born and based out of Ottawa, Canada, Sarah Tompkins received her BFAH (2013) from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Queen's University. After a string of solo exhibitions of her Veiled and Spectral Flora collections in Toronto, Canada, she has moved her focus to developing her most recent series of out of a live-in-studio. She has further been featured in a multitude of group exhibitions, most recently with the By Other Means collective in London, UK, CONTEMPORARY VENICE at Palazzo Ca'Zanardi in Italy, and SKETCH at SAW Gallery in Ottawa. She has recently been interviewed for and featured on the cover of The Artist Catalogue (Brooklyn, NY) and featured in Art Reveal Magazine (Finland). Her work is held in private collections in Montreal, Toronto, New York, and London.
Make It Past The Mourning
Make It Past The Mourning, Oil on Panel, 60 x 60
This project seeks to document the results of human interaction with land. These landscapes reside in the zones between human management and wilderness. I find these meeting places of natural and synthetic elements to be absurd confusions of intention and understanding. Sarah hopes to expose the small comedies created in these places by our attempts to control nature as well as the arrogance of the assumption that we can understand a process of interaction that is inherently far more complex than we are. Just as my subjects are the result of land being forced through human terms to become digestible, I come to terms with them through a logic that exists in the photographic language.
Missing Misses I, 20x30
Missing Misses II, 20x30
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2016, SPECTRAL FLORA, Skeir Gallery, Toronto, ON
2016, VEILED, Gallery 1313, Toronto, ON
2013, HEARTH, Union Gallery, Kingston, ON
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2018, Alphabet, Hintonburg Happening at Mint Studio, Ottawa, ON
2017, 30 UNDER 30, Viridian Artists Inc, Chelsea, New York, NY
2017, Two-Person Exhibition with Tiffany Huta, Skeir Gallery, Toronto, ON
2016, WTFDYP, The Gladstone, Toronto, ON
2016, Forgetting, Haus of Gaunt, London, UK
2016, CONTEMPORARY VENICE - Architectures of Identities, Palazzo Ca'Zanardi, Venice, Italy 2016, Collective 19, Gallery 1313, Toronto, ON
2016, SURFACING, Mist Gallery, Richmond, VA
2015, SKETCH, SAW Gallery, Ottawa, ON
2015, The Salon of Inclusiveness II, The Black Cat Gallery, Toronto, ON
2015, Between Us, Les Voix Visuelles, Ottawa, ON
2014, 75th Anniversary Exhibition, Wallack Galleries, Ottawa, ON
2013, Ottawa West Art in the Park, Ottawa, ON
2013, Maverick Behaviour Final Exhibition, Ontario Hall Gallery, Kingston, ON
2013, Maverick Mentality, 275 Princess Street, Kingston, ON
2011, 2nd Year BFA Select, The Artel, Kingston, ON
2011 MyWar: Participation in an Age of Conflict, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON
2008. Le Salon: Celebrating 35 years of the Firestone Collection, The Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, ON
2007, Portrait Gallery of Canada Exhibition, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, ON
2006, Toronto Youth Art Festival, Toronto, ON
