appealing

The Maynard
Fall 2017

Fall 2017 Issue Cover Art

by Sara Shields

Sara Shields is an emerging Toronto based artist who specializes in pastel drawings on paper. She graduated from Centennial College’s Fine Arts Studio program in 2010, where she first began developing her distinctive take on figure drawing. Since graduating, Shields has exhibited in various solo shows, group shows, and art fairs. Her drawings have been acquired by Centennial College’s private library and head office collections, as well as purchased by collectors around the world.

Shields’ art is driven by human interaction and its influence on people’s feelings, with equal interest in their styles of communication, e.g. everyday small talk, elaborate storytelling, or manipulating the truth, as their lack of interaction. Focused on the human figure, her drawings are constantly evolving as storytelling and human life continue to evolve. Lines, patterns, and organic shapes coalesce into human-alien hybrids. Searching for an alternate human universe within the subconscious, Shields strives to depict imaginative tableaux of aliens/human beings void of gender and race. The tableaux combine the dark and obscure with lightness and hope. The aliens/human beings, distorted and bursting, with movement embody the unknown and the familiar to be inclusive and engaging.

Viewers are invited to create their own stories, dwell on memories, and interact with the movement found within each work.