Sarah-Faith Strait was born in Mount Gilead, Ohio. She earned her B.F.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, with concentrations in painting, drawing, and printmaking. She later received her M.F.A. in Studio Art from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Strait has exhibited in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Maine, and Virginia, and her work is found in collections throughout America. The most notable collections are Ohio Wesleyan University, art critic and historian, Martica Sawin, Sara Vance Waddell, and The Woodberry Forest School. Strait is a recipient of the competitive Three Arts Scholarship Award. Strait currently resides in Virginia, where she continues her studio practice.

Artist Statement:

The image of the horse has been a long-standing obsession throughout my life and it has taken on many variations. In my current work, I engage with the form of the horse, exploring conditions of time and movement that challenge the “frozen image” that is inherent to the medium of painting. In my paintings, the horse and its surrounding environment are fragmented into parts and reassembled into a new whole that defies a static reality. In my work I use a myriad of material processes, where photography and digital collage are utilized to create stimulus for eventual paintings. The digital source material is later transformed by an intuitive painting process where the working of material becomes subject matter in its own right. While my initial motivations are centered around the horse in motion, the images that result from this process continually surprise me as they are unable to resist becoming more. Through dynamic arrangements of form, and through the actions of painting, the horses in my work transcend mere movement and dramatize fractured, emotionally charged gestures across the canvas surface, and present visual ambiguities that encourage a contemplative state in which new meanings for the horse can emerge. It is through the working of material that my paintings reveal a living being that possesses a nuanced complexity and vitality.