About Sarah
My Story
My paintings are varied but primarily they are about landscapes and seascapes. I’m amazed by the complexity and beauty in our world. Nature's organic shapes are just breathtaking and the wider landscapes they sit in is enchanting to me, no matter what the season or weather.
I’m originally from Lancashire, with its lush rolling hills and expansive beaches. My initial appreciation of nature came from happy childhood days scouring hedgerows and beaches for shells and seedheads. The intricate details even in the smallest objects delighted me and my pockets were always filled with little treasures to take home and marvel over.
Family holidays all over the UK gave me a love of craggy mountains, secluded beaches, and solitary lakes. I honestly can’t believe my luck that I now live my life between the beautiful landscapes of the Lake District and Wales and enjoy frequent holidays in Scotland.
My Inspiration
Because the beauty of our world is at the heart of my paintings, I regularly stop the clock and take enough time to look at it – and really see it.
This means a lot of focused time not just observing and photographing tangible objects but touching and handling them also. I feel their tactile nature, their weight, and temperature, their essence.
Really seeing our world also means being receptive to the subtle imperceptible things, the intangible. It requires me to be still and quiet. I breathe gently, listen, and even close my eyes. Then I can fully experience the soothing warmth of a summer breeze across my skin or the heavy charge in the air just before a thunderstorm.
This multidimensional knowledge results in powerful attachments and feelings of nostalgia for the mountains, beaches and countryside I have visited. The intimate knowledge of things, places, and experiences feeds subconsciously into my art.
My Process
I begin my paintings by working with broad abstract sweeps of colour often relating to breathtaking images I’ve observed in a landscape or seascape. I’m guided by my intuition with colour and those ‘Oh that’s gorgeous!’ moments when colour combinations light me up. The warm butterscotch hues of a beach in Wales sit dramatically beside the cold brooding purples I’ve seen on Lake District mountains. Meanwhile the luminous turquoise of the coastline in Scotland merges effortlessly into the vivid blue of a Lake in Wales. Over numerous painting sessions a process of addition and subtraction takes place. Shapes, patterns and colours are added layer by layer using brushes and a wide variety of tools to create marks and textures. By scraping and sanding the painting back at different intervals shapes and fragments of imagery from beneath are revealed that remind me of something I’ve previously seen or experienced and I can’t wait to develop that imagery in new and exciting ways.
This process often takes weeks and yet the element of chance involved in each painting is thrilling to me and makes each journey an absolute joy. It also means that every finished painting is a unique piece with a rich history of its own concealed beneath the surface, like treasure.
I hope you enjoy looking at my landscape and seascape paintings as much as I’ve enjoyed creating them.