Liabilities Painting

Robin Jack Sarner is a Los Angeles–based abstract artist working in large-scale mixed media painting and works on paper. Her practice investigates how experience is carried over time, how unresolved histories remain present without defining identity. Gesture and material function as structural elements rather than expressive release, allowing surfaces to hold intensity through accumulation, compression, and restraint. Her process is guided by containment, repair, and partial visibility. Marks are layered and allowed to persist, while stitching, reinforcement, and structural interventions appear where materials show strain. Earlier gestures are neither erased nor resolved; they remain as background noise, shaping the work through subtle tonal drift, rhythmic disturbance, and the visible passage of time. Each surface operates as a coherent field capable of bearing pressure without narrative closure. Sarner holds a B.S. in Art Education from Florida Southern College, where she received the Albert Key Award for highest honors. After a period working in business management and raising a family, she returned to her studio practice with renewed focus and rigor. Her work has been commissioned, collected privately, featured in publications, and was the subject of a filmed studio visit with art critic Peter Frank. Sarner is an active member of The Artist Studio collective at the Palos Verdes Art Center. A passionate advocate for arts education, Sarner designs and delivers abstract art curricula for K–12 students in local school districts, reaching over 6,000 children annually.