about the artist

Sara Lou grew up scribbling in Niagara Falls, Canada. Primarily a story teller, she spent the early part of her career pushing her materials to their limits in order to tell the stories of the haunted faces gracing her surfaces. As her work matures, subjects shift from raw and abstract frozen moments to fully rendered living worlds using her own brand of magic realism. Fond of multi-disciplinary wanderings, Sara Lou also explores immersive installation art as loose expressions of contemporary circus. Since the spring of 2019 she has been working in oil paints, and looks forward to sharing her new works when they are ready.

Sara Lou began training as an aerialist in January of 2016, following a deep-rooted need to fly. Later that year she became ring leader of Harmonic Shadow Circus, a troupe of shroomy doomy shapeshifters, having chosen to take the torch from the weathered conductor of their ghost train. She has been performing on lyra since the spring of 2019 after a period of extensive study.

Sara Lou’s academic interests influence her subject matters. Her 2013 SSHRC-funded MA on Old Norse trickster figures produced a series of cold and abstracted living landscapes and portraits of the beings who inhabit them. Since graduating, her research interests have expanded to include North American animals, the lands of Niagara and its keepers, and Niagara’s circus history. She currently lives and works on the outskirts of the former village of Drummondville in the heart of Niagara Falls.

instagram: @corvidlou