biography

Sarah Dudley was born in Montréal and studied visual art in Canada, France and the U.S.A. In 2002, after
two years in an intimate relationship with various lithography stones at the Tamarind Institute, she spent the
next eight years with no fixed address, poking her nose into creative projects all over the place. Sarah paints,
prints, draws and films mostly because she wants to know what the meaning of life is, but really she just
thinks colour and texture are incredibly sexy and delicious.

Sarah’s work has been forced upon the public in Europe and in North America, and she has every intention
of eventually conquering the entire world. There are those who encourage this kind of behaviour and have
bestowed upon her a number of awards, grants and artist residencies. Others have even taken to buying her
images for collections such as the Allied Irish Bank and Shell Canada.

Sarah was last seen in Berlin- or was it in Ireland? Maybe it was both.

 

statement

My images deal with the recurring cycle of decay and reconstruction that continuously transforms our
environment but which is often taken for granted. I seek to capture the beauty in the things that often go
unnoticed, becoming seduced by the details that betray the soft underbelly of the world. In this way even the
most unexpected place or object becomes a kind of temporary home where a deeper connection with one’s
surroundings can be created.

Autumn leaves display their most breathtaking colours for only a couple of weeks each year, and then are
blown to the ground where their beauty rapidly fades. So it is with many things on the waning phase of the cycle.
As the process of decay begins there is a visual celebration, a last hurrah before full-blown decomposition and
transformation sets in, itself a necessary step towards making space for the new. It is this short-lived indulgence
that expresses the human condition, our need to find meaning and purpose in the inevitable processes of change,
letting go, loss and renewal that are strewn throughout our lives.

My works embrace this process and translate it into a jubilant eulogy, inviting the observer to relish the beauty
of the unexpected and to contemplate the value of impermanence. Abstracted through close cropping and the
enlarging of very small sections, my subjects transform into obscured versions of themselves, their residual reality
merging with their underlying essence in a feast of colour, shape and texture.