Sarah Palmer is an artist based in Glasgow whose practice explores how landscape is represented, shared and consumed in the age of social media. She was recently selected for RBA Rising Stars (Royal Over-Seas League, London) and was a prize-winner at It’s Paradise Up North (Paradise Works, Manchester). In 2024 she was shortlisted for the BEEP Painting Prize (Elysium Gallery, Swansea). Within Glasgow, Sarah has exhibited at Strange Field, South Block Gallery, New Glasgow Society and the Glue Factory.
Sarah completed her MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2025 with the support of a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust. She previously studied at Wimbledon College of Art, graduating in 2014, after which she was shortlisted for the Works in Print Art Graduates Prize, selected for the Clyde & Co Art Award Collection and longlisted for Saatchi New Sensations.
“Moving to Scotland challenged me to confront the fractured relationship I have with nature. I began to paint landscapes, but landscapes from the perspective of someone who spends a lot of time indoors, staring at their phone. My paintings play with the way we consume images in a world that is overflowing with them. At first, they seem like familiar landscapes you may have seen in photos while scrolling through Instagram, but they refuse to sit still. They flip back and forth between making perfect sense and reminding you that you’re looking at a painting, slowing you down as you try to make sense of them. This sensation is mirrored in the studio, where moments of slippage take place between documenting, remembering and imagining.“