Sarah H. Paulson
Sarah H. Paulson, A sister to her majesty, 2019, gouache, acrylic, pastel, and graphite on paper, 12 x 12 inches (approx. 18 x 18 inches framed and ready for hanging) This work was completed as part of The Unseen Hand’s 3 Lights Project Fall 2019.
SARAH H. PAULSON was born in New Orleans, LA. She graduated with a BFA in Special Studies in Art from Syracuse University in 2002 and has lived and worked as a performance artist in Brooklyn, NY & Putney, VT. She is also a student of alchemical Taoist medicine and practices acupuncture at Sword Hands Acupuncture & Qigong.
From 1999 until 2012, Sarah worked for the contemporary art gallery Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York City. In 2008, she received an acupuncture treatment from Laura Clarke Stelmok, which profoundly shifted her orientation to life as both an artist and a human being. Shortly thereafter, inspired by the place where art and medicine intersect, Sarah began studying with Laura as a way to deepen her relationship to her own art practice. Much to her surprise, two years later, she woke up one morning knowing that she had to become an acupuncturist. In 2013, she received her Master of Acupuncture from the Academy for Five Element Acupuncture, carried by the currents that were brought alive in her through her teacher.
Sarah continues to study with The Unseen Hand: Medicine from Antiquity, as well as the school’s acupuncture institute, The Virtue of Heaven/Earth. Since becoming a lifelong student in this tradition, her relationship to art and medicine, individually and together, as well as her relationship to the Earth, herself, and the Divine have reached depths she never could have anticipated.
Sarah’s art practice, including her paintings and drawings, are rooted in the performative. She believes that performance, in its sacred form, is connected to the mystery of what it is to be human. This whisper of communication, though still vastly unknown to her, has been alive in her for as long as she can remember. She is forever grateful to be in a tradition that trains the hand of the artist/physician/scribe to receive and be guided by the hints, the gestures, and the intelligence of Love.
Her solo work, as well as her previous collaborations with Holly Faurot, have been exhibited/performed at English Kills Art Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY; Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY; ACG (Alice Chilton Gallery), Brooklyn, NY; NurtureArt, Brooklyn, NY; The Chocolate Factory Theater, Brooklyn, NY; P.I.T. (Projects In Transit), Brooklyn, NY; Spark Contemporary Art Space, Syracuse, NY; the Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and Dance Theatre at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, NY; NYCAMS (NY Center for Art & Media Studies), NY; Villa Feuerlösche, Prenning, Austria; Open Art Gallery, Beijing, China; among other national and international venues and public spaces.
For more about Sarah’s work, visit www.sarahhpaulson.com.