Sara Shields is an emerging Toronto-area based artist who primarily specializes in pastel drawings on paper. She graduated from Centennial College’s Fine Arts Studio program in 2010, where she first began developing her distinctive take on figure drawing. Since graduating, Shields has exhibited in various solo shows, group shows, and art fairs around the province. Her drawings have been acquired by Centennial College’s private library and head office collections, as well as purchased by clients located around the world.

Shields’ art is driven by human interaction and its influence on people’s feelings and actions (whether it is through everyday small-talk, elaborate storytelling, or manipulating the truth, for example), or by lack of interaction and action. Focused on the human figure, her drawings are constantly evolving - as storytelling and human life continue to evolve.  Lines, patterns, and organic shapes coalesce into human-alien hybrids. Always searching for an alternate human universe that lies deep within the subconscious, Shields strives to depict imaginative tableaus of alien-human beings void of gender and race, as feelings and actions see none of that. Personal emotions are played with and externalized, but become completely masked within each drawing. Images that at first seem dark and obscure, suddenly offer glimmers of delicate lightness and hope. The aliens – distorted and bursting with movement, or calmly posed - embody not only the unknown, but also something familiar, inclusive, and engaging.

These obscure and wonderful figures bring to form the everyday feelings and actions that make us human. Viewers are invited to create their own stories, dwell on past memories, and allow the movement to lead them to the deeper interactions found within each work.