Sarah Duet (b. 1988) is a mixed-media artist from Louisiana. Layers, texture, and depth unify her work across mediums – from large-scale abstract paintings, to graphic art and collage, to erasure poetry.
Photo by Carrie Linn Photography
Grounded by the use of found, natural elements and inspired by the waterscapes of the Gulf South, her work is exploratory, investigative, instinctual, and infused with emotion. Sarah makes art that is meant to live alongside you, bringing a sense of calm vitality into your everyday spaces. By inviting viewers to slow down and reflect, she seeks to foster connection in this increasingly fragmented world.
Sarah has exhibited work at the Meadows Museum of Art, Clean Slate Botanicals, Artspace, and RAW the studio. Her art and writing have been published in Point of Vue Magazine, Art House America, Heliopolis, Pandora Art and Literary Magazine, and Enneagram Magazine. Her first book of blackout poetry, WHAT HAPPENED IS HAPPENING: Poems, was published in 2022.
With a background in music, intentional community, and athletics, she synthesizes a diverse range of interests and experience in her dynamic body of work. When she’s not in the studio, you might find her shooting hoops, drinking coffee, or playing her guitar.
Sarah lives and works in Shreveport, LA, with author-illustrator, Kirk Reedstrom, and their very sneezy cat.
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for SHOREWARD, 2025
SHOREWARD is a collection of mixed-media, abstract paintings inspired by my preoccupation with the power of water. Having grown up along the Gulf Coast, I know water first as vital, essential to life, and a source of peace. The rhythm of waves mirrors some internal rhythm in me, in us. Yet I hold this appreciation in tension with a sense of impermanence and anticipatory grief as I watch rising sea levels gradually erase the places my family has called home.
These juxtapositions are present in the paintings as I often use hard edges––like palette knives, squeegees, and trowels––to scrape and blend paint into soft focus. Using primarily acrylic paint on canvas or wood panel, I build layers of texture through gestural brushstrokes, carved modeling paste, and found elements like sand. Mark-making with pencil, graphite, spray paint, tempera, and wax pastels adds detail and interest most visible at close range. Fluidity and movement are hallmarks across this collection, as are the coastal earth tones used throughout––calming blues and greens, grounding grays, spacious whites and sandstone.
I paint large work because I crave the sense of immersion found at the water’s edge that is always drawing me shoreward in good times and bad. I paint small work because sometimes shorter, fleeting moments of beauty are what is most accessible to us and no less crucial for our survival and thriving. Painting, for me, is a practice of embodiment and remembering to honor our human physicality in a world increasingly dominated by screens.
In addition to historic and contemporary painters––like Gerhard Richter, Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, Lanecia A. Rouse, Kyle Steed, and a’driane nieves––my work is heavily influenced by memory, music, books, and poetry. Late in the process of creating this body of work, I encountered a poem by Mary Oliver that conferred on me its title:
The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean from Which We Came
The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give
gifts and withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,
and so, no doubt, can you, and you.
— Mary Oliver
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Sarah Duet (b. 1988)
hello@sarahduet.com | sarahduet.com
Bachelor of Arts in Communication: New Media Design, Centenary College of Louisiana, 2011
Selected Exhibitions:
SHOREWARD, 2025 - Clean Slate Botanicals, Shreveport, LA
Critical Mass 12, 2024 (Group) - Artspace, Shreveport, LA
Refractions, 2022 - Abingdon Press; RAW the studio, Shreveport, LA
What Happened is Happening, 2022 - Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport, LA
The Pattern Happening, 2021 - Asbury United Methodist Church, Bossier City, LA
Publications:
What Happened is Happening: Poems, Book & Mortar Press, 2022
Enneagram Magazine, 2021
Pandora Art & Lit. Magazine, 2020
Arthouse America, 2013 & 2015
Heliopolis: Artist Profile, 2014
Point of Vue Magazine, 2013
Selected Workshops:
Make Things & Share Them - P.E.O. International Chapters, 2022 & 2023
How to Make Blackout Poetry - Captain Shreve High School, 2020
Enneagram Creativity - Great Raft Brewing, 2019 & Pfeiffer University, 2021
Art & Social Justice Series - Noel Community Arts Program, 2016
Honors:
NWLA Roster Artist
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Local artist to debut new exhibit at Clean Slate Botanicals - KTAL News, 2025
Sarah Duet: What Happened is Happening- The Meadows Museum of Art, 2022
Meadows Museum of Art to feature Centenary alumna’s work - Centenary College, 2022
Centenary alumna collaborates on new interdisciplinary project - Centenary College, 2022
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Poetry and the Enneagram with Sarah Duet - The Narrative Enneagram, 2022 (VIDEO)
Artist Talk + Conversation at Meadows Museum of Art - 2022 (VIDEO)
Sarah Duet: What Happened is Happening - The Meadows Museum of Art, 2022 (TEXT)
The Enneagram, Creativity, and Allyship- Conscious Construction with Abi Robins, 2019 (AUDIO)
Artist Profile - Heliopolis, 2014 (TEXT)