The granddaughter of a rodeo rider in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, Sarah grew up in a small NJ suburb wishing to run away and join a roving carnival herself. After studying illustration and animation at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, Sarah moved to LA with nothing but a bus pass and an armload of art. She found her opportunity at the funky Venice film studio of Roger Corman where she joined the art department of his latest low-budget space adventure, “Android.” There she entered the energetically inventive arena of the entertainment world where she remained for many years designing and fabricating murals, props, and sets for films, television shows , and even an iconoclastic puppet theater production.
Though she attended an art school, Sarah’s painting skills are self-taught. Like set and prop design, Sarah’s artworks are a form of storytelling. She pulls the subjects of her paintings from dream spaces where a quirky subconscious logic directs figures, movements, and time.
Her themes are often allegorical, exploring human relationships with nature and each other. Using color and symbols as narrative elements, her artworks employ a contemporary visual language while mining deep into the ancestral memories of the collective unconscious.
Sarah has exhibited her artworks across the US, most recently appearing at Ghost Gallery in Seattle, and Castelli Art Space in LA. She has also exhibited at the Ontario Museum of History and Art, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, The Autry Museum, and Lancaster MOAH/Cedar where she won the Mayor’s Award for best painting.
Her work has been featured in film productions (Doogie Kamealoha M.D., Yes Day, Atypical, Grown-ish & Criminal Minds, among others) and publications including Shout Out LA, Unpsychology Magazine, Pomona Valley Review and Art Muzeo Magazine.
When she’s not painting, Sarah writes about art and artists on Medium.
The Fragility of Now
I grew up in a place with woods and rain. I spent summers on my stomach watching salamanders, frogs, and insects do their things. During the snowy months, I passed my free time reading fairy tales, mythologies and folklore.
I now live in a rocky canyon at the western edge of Los Angeles County. This is an area known to fire crews as a Wildlife Urban Interface, an undeveloped space where city and nature collide. Here I am occupied by different kinds of plants, animals, and local lore.
My childhood habitat’s weather cycles included a lot of rain and snow. In my new environment, wet is replaced by dry. Fire is one of our yearly seasons (along with Rain, Wind, Mud, and sometimes Earthquake) where people and animals run in tandem for shelter. Genius loci, human behavior, and the persistence of nature are all central themes in this evolving story.
Life can be resilient, or insanely lucky. It is also very fragile. My paintings focus on describing my world and its varied inhabitants as oneiric archetypes in an ever-changing world. Through my art, I reflect on Life: tangled and fraught, yet often magical and durable, a ride we all share on this beautiful, protean, vulnerable planet.
~Sarah
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