"With compositions dictated both by the images of a public water lily garden established by my Grandfather in San Angelo, Texas and the tangled arrangement of neurons, my work is an expression of the concepts of memory loss, family heritage and human comprehension of the ideal. The flower, a representation of perfection, accompanies the least perfect events of life. Therefore, the flower becomes my vocabulary for expressing the distance between perfection and these events.

Each piece is a record of a family history filled with Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. Unrecognizable text as well as repeatedly overlaid patterns and shapes drawn directly from the garden represent an effort to regain or recreate lost memories. All of this is undeniably entwined with my own femininity, humanity and southerness. These inescapable viewpoints are the paths through which I express these histories, resulting in a biased and flawed attempt to discover a version of the world that is unmarred. The work embodies the struggle to achieve an understanding of the divine despite human limitations. There is a point when deliberate contemplation of these human constraints brings about surrender. This surrender brings peace."

Sarah Irvin graduated from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree in Painting and Drawing in 2008. After graduating, Sarah participated in the Summer Studio Program, an intensive Post-Baccalaureate program for studio artists, at Virginia Commonwealth University. Sarah has shown work in numerous exhibitions, and her work is included in the permanent corporate collections of the Federal Reserve Bank as well as the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative of Richmond, Virginia.