Sarah Buckner

Sarah Buckner is a storyteller. The artist's image world is inspired by multiple sources: real-life encounters, the dreams that spring from them, books, and films. Thinking in paint, and through painting, Buckner has developed an intuitive and fluid approach that transforms these impressions through her material practice. The figures and situations she depicts appear both open-ended and precisely observed, as if emerging from a fully formed narrative of which viewers can only catch a momentary glimpse. The works exude an interiority reminiscent of dreams, where an object can be many incongruous things simultaneously and signify opposite meanings without contradiction. Buckner's paintings develop through her lived practice—reading, dreaming, imagining—and bear traces of these experiences: some are lighthearted, whereas others may come across as portraying moments of anxiety, confusion, or hope. Her works distill narratives into images full of mystery, their atmospheric scenes resonating with emotional potency—the exact nature of which remains elusive, even to the artist, she says.