Sarah Cain is an artist who explores and expands upon traditional ideas of painting, often modifying canvases by cutting and braiding, painting on all sides, and installing the canvas with the back of the painting facing the viewer. She also paints on other surfaces, including interior and exterior walls, floors, and dollar bills, and often includes found objects such as crystals, feathers, beads, and other items she has a personal attachment to. Her process involves many layers of altering a composition—a cycle of creation and destruction that, in part, revolves around self-discovery. Cain describes herself as a feminist painter, using elements seen as feminine as an act of non-conformity and as an alternative to the traditional hierarchies of painting.

Sarah Cain was born in Albany, New York, in 1979 and grew up in nearby Kinderhook. She earned her MFA at the University of California Berkeley in California and her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent solo exhibitions include We Will Walk Right Up to The Sun at the San Francisco International Airport; My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and Sarah Cain: In Nature at The Momentary, Bentonville, Arkansas. In 2014, she was included in I was a double at the Tang Teaching Museum. Cain currently lives and works in Los Angeles.