Sarah Davidson works primarily between drawing and painting to create compositions in which shadowy, biomorphic figures and delicate, foliated fragments mingle. Making reference to a history of discourses constructing the ‘natural’ world, their works investigate bodies, environment, observation, and the tangled strings which often bind them together. While they often draw directly from ‘nature’, their drawings diffract distinctions between embodied self and other through a queer ecological lens: critters and space collapse in upon one another, suggesting a permeable web. Both the eye and the mind work towards the known--animals, plants, brush marks, lines--but are caught in a space of undoing. A question floats among the forms: who’s seeing who, and how?
Sarah Davidson (they/them, b.1989, Ottawa) lives and works in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. They have exhibited their work at Wil Aballe Art Projects (Vancouver), Feuilleton (Los Angeles), Cassandra Cassandra (Toronto), Erin Stump Projects (Toronto), Unit 17 (Vancouver), The Power Plant (Toronto), The New Gallery (Calgary), and Audain Gallery (Vancouver), among others. They were a finalist in the 2018 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and are the recipient of awards including the Canada Council for the Arts Concept to Realization (2022), and Research and Creation (2021) grants. They hold a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art & Design (2015) and an MFA from the University of Guelph (2019).
