Serena Saunders

As an extension of her passion for working with and within the community Serena has found a home in mural work and is proud to have this form of engagement to create art for and alongside those who inspires her life’s work. You will often find a matter of injustice juxtaposed with hope fighting its way through the lines on canvas to prevail at the surface. Serena cultivates intimate relationships with her muses, those connections along with her spiritual studies fuels the direction of her paintings. Pulling from a background in fashion design, the attire along with the staging is often made by the artist in its entirety to allow her more creative control over the story being told. It is clear that her work is influenced by her compassion towards what it means to be born into struggle and the ability to find the beauty in it. This was nurtured during the decades Serena has spent teaching art, mural making, poetry and entrepreneurship at dozens of schools and non-profit organizations both in-person and virtually.

Serena Saunders is a full-time artist who balances studio life with home while operating PassionArt Designs, LLC. This mompreneur works from a place of the importance of incorporating work and family life to blossom in her practice. Though her concentration is in portraiture, Serena also has meaningful work in the areas of sculpture and writing. With a fresh, color-strong perspective her art speaks to our human condition, most notably that of our society's youth and women. Her often large-scale, abstractly bold and poetically composed paintings offers layers of narrative — almost as if the poet and the painter in her are collaborating. With a color palette that gives her intricate prints a world of their own, Serena Saunders works to intrigue the imagination while not only documenting the truth of the present but also speaking to what’s possible in the spirit.

Serena Saunders was bestowed the honor of serving as the Creative Ambassador for the City of Philadelphia. She seeks to continue to contribute to the conversation of what art is with intentionality for women of color. What the artist prides the most are the beautiful and authentic relationships she has formed with her muses over the years and the freedom she’s allowed to paint their truths. Serena Saunders has shown in spaces such as Galleries and International Fairs, encompassing stages from Scope Miami as part of Art Basel and as far as Canada and Sweden. Her murals can be found from corporate lobby’s, to schools and touching the sky of urban landscapes, with the most recent unveiling at the historic Kimmel Cultural Campus in Philadelphia.

Info

Serenasart@gmail.com