December 5, 2026 to March 6, 2027
Refuge
Sarah Paulsen
Artist statement
I walked until I had my answers.
These paintings were made during a difficult moment in my life, when I was contemplating major life changes. I turned to walking and sitting meditation as a way of listening to myself and becoming more attuned to my surroundings. Along the way, I began noticing the small things I might otherwise have overlooked—a shadow, a seasonal shift, or a place that offered a sense of refuge. Noticing beauty became an anchor amid the pain and confusion I was experiencing.
Working in oil, watercolor, and gouache, I documented fleeting moments from my daily walks, sometimes photographing them to revisit in the studio and other times painting directly from the landscape. Walking and painting offered ways to slow down and attend to the ordinary moments that felt both deeply personal and universal. I explored these ideas through stop-motion animation as well, documenting the transformation of Emmenegger Park, a place tied to my childhood and community. Across these practices, I considered how landscapes change and how our relationships to places evolve over time.
A recurring theme in these paintings is refuge—not only as a place of personal solace, but as something we find in nature and in being together. Natural spaces have offered me places for reflection, connection, and communal gathering. My artworks bring together people and landscapes to reflect these shared experiences, and the ways that nature can hold us through periods of change.
About Sarah Paulsen
Raised in Kirkwood, Missouri, Sarah Paulsen is an artist, filmmaker and community organizer whose artwork has been exhibited widely in local and national exhibitions, and whose prize-winning films have been featured in the St. Louis International Film Festival, the True/False Film Festival, the Black Maria Film Festival, the Motivate Film Festival and the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, among many others. She was the recipient of the 2025 Visionary Arts Award for Outstanding Artist in St. Louis, MO. In 2024, she had a retrospective at The Swope Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana. She won the 2018 Great Rivers Biennial, which culminated in an exhibit at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. A 2010 C.A.T. Institute fellow and 2015 Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellow, she has garnered numerous awards for her work and also completed several residencies, including the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.
A dedicated advocate for social change, a key aspect of Paulsen’s practice has always involved the orchestration of large-scale community projects, such as participatory public murals, thematic round-table discussions and the now-annual People’s Joy Parade on Cherokee Street.
Paulsen holds a B.F.A. in visual art from the University of Missouri, Columbia and an M.F.A. from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University. She lives and works in St. Louis, where she is the Program Manager at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and teaches art at St. Louis Community College. She recently completed a two-year Artist in Residence program with the Kranzberg Arts Residency, which culminated in a book, “Mother(ing) as Meditation,” and an art exhibit at the High Low Gallery.