Botanical Study: Two Figures

Sarah Maloney (b. 1965)

Sarah Maloney is a contemporary artist working in a variety of media, including sculpture, textiles, and painting. Her work explores the representation of women and the gendered body in medicine and in art in images that evoke the similarities in the visual treatment of human anatomy and botanical studies. In the artist’s words, “There is a tendency in our culture to romanticize the natural world, as an Eden to which we long to return. Specifically, the notion that women have an inherent relation to the natural world is deeply imbedded in the history and the psyche of our culture. I continue to question this notion in my work, including through choices of form and materials.”

Sarah Maloney’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, notably at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, St. Mary’s University Art Gallery, and the Kelowna Art Gallery. The artist’s work was also represented in the Musée national des beaux-arts du Quebec 2018 exhibition Fait main /Hand Made. Maloney has held a number of artistic residencies, in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Gros Morne National Park and at the University of Windsor School of Visual Arts Foundry. Her work is held in the public collections of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Dalhousie Art Gallery, the Nova Scotia and New Brunswick Art Bank as well private collections in Canada and Germany. In 2012, Maloney was awarded the Established Artist Recognition Award from the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.