Sarah Hickman

BFA ’20 Painting and Drawing

Making art about my life is a way of putting personal thoughts and emotions into the world. Painting gives me the ability to create then take a step back to reflect. Through the physical process of painting, I can feel without judgment, process emotions, and hopefully take control of these events by using personal symbols to represent complex ideas. For example, “All That Remains” is a piece dedicated to my grandmother who recently passed away. The focus of this digital painting surrounds her class ring that I have laid in my hand to show its importance. While creating this piece, I did not know if I would be able to see her again which is why clocks surround my head. The clocks further represent how time can change in an instance. In turn, this taught me about the importance of time. By definition time is measurable by seconds, hours, days, years and so on. Time allows us to create habits of organization and structure to our daily activities. But, how much time do I have?

Due to Covid-19 and ECU’s campus shut down, I had to pack up my studio and move home where I faced many challenges, such as a lack of space from a shared room and the ever-changing weather. The size of some paintings pushed me to paint outside in the carport. There were days I could not go outside because it was raining. It was challenging to paint with the wind for many reasons, like the paint would dry too fast on both the canvas and palette or the wind would knock over the canvas. There was an instance where I walked inside and when I came back my canvas had fallen face down on the ground. When lifting the canvas back up I found the paint had smeared. It was frustrating to start over. I created a time-lapse video to show my process of working and the scale of the canvas which is an essential aspect of the work and the reason I had hoped it would be seen in a gallery setting. To see more of my artwork and what I have been up to please visit my Instagram @sxrh.hickmxn.

Painting Time-Lapse