Sarah Nguyen is a painter living and working in rural Missouri. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibits and publications nationally and internationally.

She received her BFA in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

She works as an Art Instructor at the University of Central Missouri and Art Editor of Pleiades Magazine and Pleiades Press. She currently lives in central Missouri with her husband, the writer Phong Nguyen, and their three sons.

Statement

My work evokes memory, play, ritual, the dissolving boundaries of waking life and dreams. I use a balance of abstract and representational forms in order to sever the connection between shape and meaning, connecting the viewer instead to the gesture of the brush, the cut of the knife, so that s/he becomes complicit in the art. Folklore, reverence and refinement of nature, and observance of daily life, are the concepts behind my work.

Using modern mediums and techniques, I render each subject then allow forces such as gravity, chemical interaction, and random chance to take over and dissolve the forms, reflecting the occasional dissolving of between self and other, that we experience when engaged in universal human activities such as play, ritual, and art.