About

Eugene Sarmiento is an artist and educator from Oak Cliff, Dallas, TX currently teaching in Concord, NH. Eugene received his BFA in Printmaking from the University of Texas at Arlington and his MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from the University of Kansas. He enjoys spending time in gardens smelling the roses and drawing them, listening to Outkast in the studio, admiring the works of William Blake, and making zines about time’s perpetual existential dread.

Artist Statement 

My work focuses on a nuanced representation of the plight of working life and the struggles of finding acceptance/purpose while highlighting melancholic beauty in lived experiences. Within my own developed iconography, I personify many objects relating to markers of life such as heavy tombstones, dying suns, and memories of has-been flowers. Many influences depicting these icons derive from memories of life lost and perpetual hardships capturing life’s sincerity and joy through ideas of my own existential despondency. I interpret joy and despondency as two sides to the same coin asking ‘how are we going to know what the good times are if we never have the bad times?’

My practice is built on ideologies of multiplicity, rapid dissemination through self publishing zines/printed ephemera, the flatness of printmaking, and the intimacy of gesture the hand offers in drawing.