Sarah Smith studied at the Slade School of Fine Art before a formative residency in the ochre landscapes of Morocco, where her encounter with raw earth materials and the geological formations of the Atlas Mountains recalibrated her understanding of what painting could be.

Upon returning to London, she began working at a dramatically larger scale — stretching linen canvases to architectural proportions and developing the material language for which she has become known: thick impasto built from linseed oil, raw earth pigments, mineral powders, bone char and ancient ochres sourced from across Europe and North Africa.

The term "topographic scar paintings" emerged organically from critical writing around her first major London solo exhibition. The works carry the visual grammar of geological survey maps: ridge lines, striation, sudden elevation, slow erosion. But they resist pure abstraction — each canvas feels inhabited, as if recording something that happened there.

Smith works without assistants. The physical labour of building her paintings — the lifting, pressing, scraping and re-layering over months — is inseparable from the finished object. Time is her most important medium. Her paintings cannot be hurried.

She is represented by appointment only. Works are in private collections in London, New York, Paris and Zürich.