Sarah Jane Hender

Sarah Jane Hender is a British multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the shifting politics of gender representation and the entrenchment of embodied identities.

Hender is interested in the space between the visible and the psychological: what the body carries, conceals and communicates. Through the process of figurative painting, she uses distortion, fragmentation, layered surfaces and areas of unfinished canvas to create figures that feel both recognisable and psychologically unsettled. Rather than presenting a fixed identity, Hender uses the figure to explore states of becoming: how we are shaped by time, by what we remember, by those we desire and the people we share ourselves with.

Drawn to the tension between intimacy and distance, vulnerability and strength, connection and loneliness, Hender ultimately questions how much of the self can ever be known, held or contained.

In 2024, Hender completed an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, where she received the Cass Art CSM Painting Prize. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in private collections.

Hender’s work will be included in WITH EACH LOOK, Lower Slopes’ inaugural exhibition, in Islington, 23 October–1 November 2026. Her solo exhibition, UNTAMED BODIES, will take place at the Highgate gallery from 25 February–19 March 2027.