Sarah Coates

My work exists within an ongoing series titled Relics, a body of paintings and ceramic vessels that considers how experiences persist after their moment has passed. I think of each work as an artifact rather than an image or object alone: a material record of emotional, psychological, and bodily experience.
Working between clay and paint, I am interested in what remains. Memory, grief, longing, tenderness, devotion, and restraint often resist direct language, yet they leave traces. Through accumulation, repetition, and physical labor, I attempt to give those traces form. The resulting works occupy a space between preservation and transformation, asking how experiences become embedded within surfaces and how objects can carry emotional weight without relying on narrative.
The concept of containment is central to my practice. Across both media, forms that initially appear protective or beautiful often reveal a more complex tension beneath the surface. I am drawn to moments when care becomes restriction, when devotion becomes fixation, and when preservation begins to resemble confinement. Rather than resolving these contradictions, the work remains suspended within them.
Clay and paint offer distinct but related ways of exploring thes...

Dickinson College, B.A., art and art history studio concentration

Works in Progress, Goodyear Gallery, Carlisle, PA (2026)
Under Pressure, The Painting Center, New York, NY (2026)
Bold Strokes, Salmagundi Club, New York, NY (2026)
Give Up the Ghost, The Trout Gallery, Carlisle, PA (2026)
1st Street Green Cultural Park Exhibition, Brooklyn, NY (2026)
Rome Spring Fair, Tyler Gallery, Rome, Italy (2025)
Looking In, Looking Out, CALC Gallery (2023)
Off the walls, Maryland Federation of Art (2026)