Sarah Clough

About the Artist

Sarah Clough is a visual artist, writer, teacher, and curator who grew up in Oklahoma and Nebraska. Her work is about semiotics, the poetic, the physics of light, and the connections between them. She has received awards in screenwriting, journalism, and the visual arts. She has exhibited in Oklahoma, New Mexico, New York, Maryland, Virginia, and the United Kingdom. While a graduate student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, she was awarded a GradEX solo show and her paintings were also featured in the annual First Year Juried Show. She is a recent Denis Diderot Grant recipient from the Chateau d'Orquevaux Residency in Orquevaux, France, and an Artist’s Grant recipient from the Vermont Studio Center. She is currently weaving her writing and visual arts practices together in ways that are both exciting and unique to each discipline.

Artist's Statement

These paintings are rooted in graphology and semiotics, and begin as mere words. The content of the text functions not only as anchor and ground, but catapult, diving board, or rocket booster. The form the text assumes responds to the content of the phrase; sometimes it’s measured and precise, sometimes it’s scrawled and imperfect. These works are meant to be seen in sunlight, under ultraviolet light and in the dark. They allow viewers to control their experience: what is illuminated, what is unearthed, what remains buried or unexamined. This game of hide and seek might feel like spelunking into a verbal cavern, where the glowing and fading forms alternately reveal themselves or remain hidden. This experiential series demonstrates the subjectivity of perception, the impossibility of a shared and common vision, and the deficiencies of language – its potential for vacuity, arbitrariness, and incomprehensibility. More importantly, I’m speaking to language’s innate musicality, its flexibility, and its joy. Physics and biology have also inspired these works, connecting my fascination with visual communications, language, and science. This intersection is where I find meaning in this world governed by light, and communicative processes.