Statement

My work examines the interior experiences that shape how we move through relationships, community, and place. Working primarily in graphite, pastel, and mixed media, I use figurative realism to give visual form to states that can be difficult to articulate: vulnerability, transition, intimacy, disconnection, resilience, and belonging.

I describe this evolving practice as Emotional Realism. The majority of my work begins through vulnerable conversations with participants in my community. These exchanges inform the imagery, written reflections, and questions that accompany the finished works, allowing each work to move between an individual experience and something more broadly recognizable.

Through intentional color, highly rendered surfaces, and concise compositions, I use the figure not simply as a portrait of a person, but as a site of psychological and emotional experience. The realism of the image creates familiarity; the surrounding ambiguity leaves room for viewers to locate their own experiences within the work.

Conversation and participation are central to my process. I am interested in what happens when private experiences are given form, witnessed by others, and allowed to enter a shared space. The work asks how images can create points of recognition between people without flattening the complexity of individual experience.

More recently, my practice has expanded toward questions of land, sanctuary, and the relationship between emotional refuge and physical place. Across these bodies of work, I am interested in the tension between interior and exterior worlds, and in the ways individual experience becomes part of collective life.

Bio

Sara Gallagher is a Bay Area artist working in graphite, pastel, and mixed media. She received her BFA from San Francisco State University in 2013, with dual emphases in Painting & Drawing and Photography, and studied with German hyperrealist Dirk Dzimirsky from 2019–2021.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Sotheby’s New York, the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, and the Butler Institute of American Art. Her honors include 1st Place Drawing in the 17th International ARC Salon, 2nd Place Overall in the 2023 Pastel 100, 1st Grand Prize in the John Dalton Art Prize, Best Drawing in the Almenara Art Prize.

Gallagher’s work is held in public and private collections internationally, including The Bennett Collection of Women Realists and the Lunar Codex: Polaris Collection. She is represented by CK Contemporary in San Francisco.

Gallagher works from her studio at Halleck Creek Ranch in Marin County, a nonprofit equine-assisted services organization serving people with disabilities. Her life and work within this community, including supporting programs centered on participants with disabilities and their families, increasingly inform her interest in access, care, belonging, and the relationship between people and place.

Participate in the work

Many projects begin through conversations with members of the community. If you are interested in participating in future conversation-based work, please get in touch.