about sarah

About

I am an abstract, 2D Artist In Residence at Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m also a software developer and photographer. I was formerly a French instructor at the University of Kentucky and was a part of an artist collective at the Bread Box, situated behind West Sixth Brewing company in Lexington, KY.

a bit of history

I’ve been an abstract painter since the age of 9. In response to a Picasso-esque painting I created in 3rd grade, my dad gifted me a book on Picasso. The next year, he bought me an easel, acrylic paints and canvas and encouraged me to paint.

Yet, the pivotal moment in my career was in 2016. That year, I discovered the mesmerizing medium of ink on yupo paper that forever changed my life and allowed me to express myself spontaneously and intuitively through color and shape.

Another seminal moment was in 2019, when I began engaging the public on social media to gather qualitative data for the Feeling Heart Project and painted emotions based on that data. This interactive process was such a resounding success that I continued this crowd-sourcing process which led to the Enneagram Project.

Artist Statement

My art is equal parts in my control and out of it, as if I enter into a collaboration with the ink itself, the medium and art form. I begin the dialogue by choosing the color, marking with water the shape and confines in which I wish the ink to move. The ink then responds and reacts freely within the parameters that I have set. This form of art often feels like throwing the dice, a gamble. I never know what will flow, what the ink will decide to do and how it will dry.

Yet much deeper than haphazard creation, the flowing of the ink is an extension of my inner landscape. It’s akin to a spiritual, meditative process, connecting with my inner world that screams to be externalized and take form, flowing onto the paper in dazzling, sometimes terrifying ways. The finalized work often displays shapes that even resemble anatomy, organs, or cell biology. This only further supports this intrinsic/ extrinsic dialoguing, a sort of purification or ejection from my inner being via the use of color and abstract formulation.

What you see on paper is the amalgamation of what I have been taking in, intuiting, processing inside... a tenderly confused expression, a cohesive yet chaotic burst of color that synthesizes what I have been digesting from the world around me. Within this abstract ink medium, with the yupo paper, with the starting point of a color in mind, I am able to unlock, express and exhale (often in surprise) what is inside of myself.

Since discovering this medium in 2016, I have found numerous ways to express myself and connect my art to everyday life. Below are the examples of the result, divided into three categories.

Makeup & Paint Palette

Outfits matching

Digital tattoos