R Sawan White

For over 20 years my work has explored the unseen connections, languages and relationships that form daily life. Everyday I relate, respond, and intertwine with the world around me, often incongruently as I am seen and labeled by it. I see these interactions as overlapping layers; as connecting lines and forms. They build upon each other, creating a life made up of days and minutes and years of things that cannot be seen but foundationally define who I am, whether in my eyes or others. My work turns these into layers of texture and color interplaying with one another – hiding and exposing. As an artist I view creating as a spiritual practice, a mode of seeking deeper understanding of things we can’t quite reach. Much of art history concerns itself with our fundamental understanding of the sublime, sometimes in abstracted and conceptual ways and sometimes in the capturing and rendering of unfettered realism. I find that art, both in its creation and absorption, can reconcile us to parts of who we are that have been mislaid and forgotten in this tired world.

It is within this framework that I have burrowed into my career as an artist. I seek to expose and explore the unseen that surrounds us, whether emotional, spiritual or otherw...

1998-2000
Loughborough University School of Art and Design, UK First Degree, BA Highest Honors.
Fine Art Printmaking
1996-1998
Virginia Commonwealth University Provost Scholar
Painting and Printmaking

solo exhibitions-
2020 Object Lessons for the Tired, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond,VA
2019 R. Sawan White, &otherArtThings, Taipei, Taiwan
2018 The Common Quiet, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2016 Silent Things, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2015 one thousand strengths, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2013 I live with others, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2011 The Art of Gift Giving, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2009 Our parting words, we are all beggars, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2009 people are always falling asleep, The Art Gallery at UCC, Roseburg, OR
2008 how to enter a room, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2006 tell me you, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2005 Recent Work, R. Sawan White, Mangia Qui, Harrisburg, PA
2005 For Doing, For Being, Eric Schindler Gallery, Richmond, VA
2004 Entries, Artspace Gallery, Richmond, VA
2003 R. Sawan White, The Tenth Muse, Harrisburg, PA
2003 Recent Paintings, Shockoe Bottom Arts Center(SBAC), Richmond, VA
2002 Close. Artspace Gallery, Richmond, VA
2001 R. Sawan White, East Tobacco Gallery, SBAC, Richmond, VA
2000 Degree Show, Loughborough University School of Art and Design, United Kingdom


Selected other exh...