Sarah Rianhard-Gardner

Sarah Rianhard-Gardner’s work explores the temporal and shifting nature of memory and emotion. Working primarily in the mediums of painting, drawing and printmaking, she documents objects of vernacular culture and personal significance, as a meditation on the relationship between physical objects and personal memory. Her use of monotype printing, ghost monotype prints and reworking of prints with additional drawn elements serves as a metaphor for the unpredictable, multi-layered and mediated nature of memory. Rianhard-Gardner’s series of prints, Mothers and Daughters, is an evolving body of monotype prints exploring emotional memory and narratives surrounding family and motherhood. With a nod to nature morte motifs in the art historical cannon and societal constructs of femininity and motherhood, all images in this series are based on the plants and flowers gifted, grown or collected by Rianhard Gardner, her mother and her daughters. She employs monotype printing techniques to document these ephemeral floral arrangements, thereby translating the memory and experience into a personal object of reference or momento which is shared with the viewer. Rianhard-Gardner graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art, New York in 1996. She has exhibited in the USA and UK in a number of independent shows, galleries and shops. Her work is held in private collections in the UK, USA and Europe.