Sarah Royal grew up in rural North Carolina, where she roamed through the woods, exploring her environment. In that experience, she found a love for nature’s transience and the interconnectedness of all living things. It is through her admiration of nature that she developed an interest in ephemerality which has become an equally important facet of her creative process. “From mordançage to cyanotype and one-night-only exhibitions to biodegradable sculptures installed in the woods to decompose, I have always embraced the idiosyncratic nature of alternative processes that investigate the impermanence of life through art itself,” said Royal.

Graduating from Cape Fear Community College in 2018, Royal explored a variety of artistic mediums. However, it is in the darkroom that she found a presence and intentionality that called back to her time in the woods as a child. “The darkroom is such an amazing place to be and I felt really at home there,” said Royal. “It started my journey with slow processes that allowed me to really take my time and be present and not really focus on the product so much as enjoy the process while it’s happening.”

This investment in the process rather than the product is something that she carried into other creative mediums including music, film, and installation sculpture. No matter the medium, Royal’s work emphasises the ephemeral nature of all things. As an individual and as a creative, she is always exploring how time changes things and how that personally affects us as beings. Her investment in more time consuming artistic processes and admiration for the passage of time in nature has helped her, as a neurodivergent individual, reflect and engage with her experiences with intentionality. 

Royals work on view in the 2025 CFCC Alumni Art Exhibition is a series that consists of four cyanotype prints that consider the mental and physical process of pregnancy. Each work captures a facet of change that she experienced during her pregnancy, but also in reflecting on the pregnancy of her sister. From holding on to the elements that she felt defined her to letting go and giving into the process, each work is an intimate display of a life-altering experience. She surrendered to the beautiful process of her pregnancy like any other artwork – the biggest artwork she has undertaken.