My Story
I grew up in a house filled with books. Many of them were standard English Lit: the Brontés, Poe, Shelley, Stoker and Byron, followed by poets Donne, Marvel and Johnson, as well as Danté and Shakespeare. We also had a fair selection of Norse and Greek myths, and all of the Andersens and Grimms. Living in a small town with little to do, and cold winters, I had a lot of time to read and illustrate all of the stories.
In high school I skipped classes to hang out with art-major friends from Livingston College (in New Brunswick) who turned me on to Marquez, Neruda, Mishima, and sketching from live models.
After college I had an opportunity to go to Los Angeles and work on an animated film doing “in-between” and “ink and paint.” That job fizzled but another opened up, creating murals and props for a Roger Corman space epic, “Android.” 20 years later I was still working in the film business creating props and sets.
It is said that when you have children your life stops being just about you. When my daughters were little I began to experience the world through them. Though young, they already knew about climate change, war, guns, racism and sexism. So many problems. When I attempted to explain the causes of those problems to my girls, the answers all seemed to point to one thing: people feel desensitized and disconnected from people and environments outside of themselves.
This became the through-line of most of my art: We are all connected. All humans share ancestry – go back far enough, we all come from one ancient tribe. All animals on Earth share genetics – go back far enough, we all come from one ancient species. Every single thing on Earth has the same elemental origin – go back far enough, we all come from stars.
I paint in oils on wood, creating allegorical narratives about humans, nature and primal energies. Using inspirations gleaned from dreamwork, ancestral lore and folk magic, I draw invisible lines from past to present, person to person, and human to environment to convey cultural analogs and root connections.
Contact me: sarah@sarahstoneart.com
BIO
Sarah is a contemporary symbolist artist who returned to visual expression in 2008 after a 20 year career as a designer for film productions. Her work examines the way we feel about ourselves and our environments, drawing lines between ‘personal’ and ‘global’ to erode separatist constructs.
Sarah received her BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Her art inspirations come from her travels and the people she has met around the world who share their stories, beauty and humanity. Her colorful and dream-like artworks conjure a symbolic visual language to describe ideas that are simultaneously current and ancient.
Sarah’s artworks have been presented by galleries and museums around the United States including Launch LA, South Bay Contemporary, Tangent Gallery, MI; Krikawa Gallery, AZ; San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Ontario Museum of Art and History, LA Municipal Art Gallery, LA Artcore and Memorial Union Gallery, ND. Her work has been featured in many publications including LA Weekly, Art Muzeo Magazine, Pomona Valley Review, Man of the World, Diversions LA, and Naming Ceremony Magazine.