Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Sarah Arsenault

A Holistic Approach

“No era in human history has been so beleaguered by such a range of mutually exacerbating problems: from loss of biodiversity to social injustice; from the proliferation of waste to cultural homogenization; from rampant urbanization to nuclear proliferation; from the demise of community to global warming. The list of problems could be extended ad infinitum, no aspect of our lives or that of other species remains untouched, and any such problem represents a challenge to the sustainability of human and non-human life support systems.” -Gideon Kossoff

“Intertwined creatures possessing human, animal and botanical characteristics populate the fictional landscapes I create, identifying a world that is not yet lost, but needs a resolution. I want to encourage a response to the interconnectivity that exists between the disparate elements found within the painting. I ask the viewer to engage with the piece, interrogating the parts that when unified resolve the whole. Humanity has become disconnected from the rest of the living world and as a result we are destroying it. We as a species treat the land as a commodity, extracting from it what we want without any regard for the annihilating effects our actions inflict upon it. Species of animals and plants have been unable to survive in the world we have transformed for our benefit, lakes and oceans are dying, all of which identify our future as precarious. We are in need of a more holistic approach.”