Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Sarah Arsenault

Self Reflection

A look at how my work has progressed during my undergraduate years at OCAD. A filtering of palette, shape, design and imagery that repeats throughout my work. This has lead me to an exploration of what that all means to me.

“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.”