Sarah Sands Phillips is based in Toronto and her minimal, poetic work is rooted in of explorations of sentiment and beauty.
The work Sands Phillips creates appears effortless and simple, while many are more labour intensive than they seem. Most of her work is process based and lacking visual imagery, leaving the viewer to digest subtle shapes, colour shifts, and patterns. Because of this, the context and language Sands Phillips uses to frame each work, such as titles and accompanying pieces of writing, are incredibly important to the understanding of each series. For example, her body of work "Photographs of Canada" features photographic images that are no longer recognizable because their surface has been sanded away to nothing but the subtle residues of ink left behind. Because of their destruction and transformation, we wouldn't know the work started as photographs at all without the context of their title. Similarly, the series "Compositions" is made from used and abused matboards that belonged to her father, and without the text that accompanies this work, the emotion and sentimentality behind this body of work would not be as available to the viewer.
Sarah Sands Phillips carries a common colour palette throughout the majority of her practice, which is full of natural beiges, white spaces, and areas that appear stripped of colour. We love how her works are satisfyingly simple and reinvent common objects and materials in new ways!
