Sara Hartland-Rowe attended NSCAD (BFA 1990) before moving to Chicago for post-graduate work (MFA, UIC Chicago, 1993). She returned to Halifax in 2000. Her studio activity is engaged with the perceptual instance that happens between the states of blindness and knowing, specifically the flash of perception that occurs before naming begins. In this moment, discrete objects and three-dimensional space can be seen as a single totality, while the materiality and embodied nature of the world is maintained. To remain in this moment of perception is an effortful process of resisting the shortcuts of ‘everyday’ vision, but one that allows for the known world to be experienced as a brief vision of wholeness. Hartland-Rowe has exhibited across Canada, the US, South America, and Europe. Significant solo and two-person exhibitions include Small World (Museum for Textiles, 1998), Days Are Where We Live (Museum London, 2000), The World in the Evening (Dalhousie University Art Gallery, 2002), The Prince (Durham Art Gallery, 2003), all things good and pure (Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2004, Look to the Living (MSVU Art Gallery, 2012), and sweet, sweet painting (Hermes Gallery, 2019).