Sarah Drinan says of her new body of work, “Becoming Somewhere Else explores the unruliness of the body — its gooey sensations, shifting desires, uncertainties, and encounters with the unknown. The figures in my work spill into uncomfortable spaces, often entangled and disfigured, shifting between restriction and expansion, resisting fixedness and definition.”
Drinan continues, “I’m also intrigued by the body as a site where the mythical and the everyday intersect — where the ordinary bodily acts of living, such as breathing, sensing, creating, eating, sleeping, and intimacy, can become moments of metamorphosis. … Both the body and painting become sites of perpetual becoming and a space of uncertainty, where nothing is fixed, and where transformation unfolds, even within the confines of the everyday.”
Drinan’s paintings explore the complexities of the body — its vulnerability, desires, unease, resistance, and messiness. Drawing on her background in mental health occupational therapy and the rich history of figurative painting, she explores the body as a site of physical and emotional experience. Her fleshy compositions are inspired by a diverse image bank, including sketches, personal snapshots, internet archives, historical figurative art, digital media and modelling apps. Drinan’s paintings gesture towards a body rooted in sensation and transformation, reflecting on the fluidity of identity and the tension between constraint and liberation. The figures in Drinan’s paintings mutate and shift, refusing to settle into static forms. This is inspired by mythical shapeshifters from Irish folklore, such as the selkie, changelings, and the púca. Like these creatures, Drinan’s figures are always mutating, fluid, and ambiguous, reflecting the complexity of bodily experience.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sarah Drinan (b. 1994, Australia) is a figurative painter whose work explores the complexities of the body — its vulnerability, desires, unease, resistance, and messiness. Drawing on her background in mental health occupational therapy and the rich history of figurative painting, Drinan explores the body as a site of physical and emotional experience, shaped by narratives, systems, and environments. Her fleshy compositions draw from a diverse image bank, including sketches, personal snapshots, internet archives, historical figurative art, digital media and modelling apps. These figures often appear fluid and shifting, evoking a state of transcendence — bodies in flux, oscillating between the human and mythical. Drinan’s work gestures toward a body rooted in sensation and transformation, reflecting on the fluidity of identity and the tension between constraint and liberation, the known and the unknown.
Drinan has been selected as a finalist in prestigious prizes, including The Ramsay Art Prize (2023) at the Art Gallery of South Australia, the country’s most generous prize for artists under 40. She is a two-time finalist for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2022 and 2021). In 2022, she was awarded the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship Residency at Shark Island, Kangaroo Valley. Her work is held in private and public collections, including Artbank, Australia.