Charlotte Saylor is a Chicago-based artist whose practice involves collecting, composing, and painting. She forages for discarded objects such as cardboard or VHS tapes, arranging them in unexpected ways while still allowing for their previous forms to linger. The color, texture, and rhythm of the paint, whether it’s oil, acrylic, casein, or encaustic, recontextualize these objects, framing and holding them with care. 

 

Saylor grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, and graduated from the University of California, Davis, in 2019 with a BA in Art Studio. After graduating, she attended an artist residency at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy. She later earned both a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating in 2025. She was awarded the Teaching Fellowship at SAIC where she taught undergraduate courses in painting.

 

Her work has been exhibited at EXPO Chicago, Secrist Beach Gallery, the Design Museum of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, Site:Brooklyn Gallery, Research House for Asian Art, Circle Contemporary, Patient Info, James B Marco Gallery, Outlet, Ivory Gate Gallery, ARC Gallery, Purple Window Gallery, .liminal.projects., Union Street Gallery, Howling Pages, the Dittmar Memorial Gallery at Northwestern University, and SAIC Galleries, among others. She has presented solo and two-person exhibitions including Stream of Consciousness at Art City in 2024, her MFA thesis exhibition in 2025, and Twice Found at No Instructions Gallery in Milwaukee in 2026. Her work is published in Secrist Beach’s Masterclass Exhibition Catalogue, which includes essays by Lisa Wainwright and Michelle Grabner.