Sarah has relished a return to wilder landscapes since lockdown and has produced oil paintings and watercolours of Tentsmuir, Ullapool, the East Neuk, as well as remote places on the Norfolk coast where she grew up. With loose expressive handling of paint, Sarah reflects the changing light, nuances of cloud, the effect of sun on water and of mists rolling in. Following highly successful solo exhibitions at Dawyck Botanic Gardens 2021 and Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh 2022 - Sarah presents new oil paintings made in her studio.

Sarah is interested in the close relationship between poetry and painting - the inner rhythm and harmony of composition and the rhyming of colour and the play of light.  

Sarah process begins with the gentle application of pigment on textured
watercolour paper, gesso board or canvas which is placed flat, and this
surface is loosely brushed. The first coats of paint pigment react with this
ground, creating fluid pools of colour. Rather than work against these
abstract forms, Sarah uses them so that landscape emerges through
subsequent layers. Her painting and prints occupy a realm between an
observed encounter and her memory of a place.

In response to the first lock-down Sarah enjoyed making sketches in her own and her neighbours inspirational gardens for the #100days project

Since lockdown Sarah has refocused her research and work; drawing ‘en plein-air’ in her immediate surroundings. She has continued to draw and paint daily at Dr Neil’s Garden, the Botanics and Malleny Gardens,
Edinburgh. In the studio she explores new motifs for a series called ‘Lost worlds’, and through the process of making multiple drawings and paintings she is finding a new pictorial language and palette in her watercolours, oil paintings and prints. Ethereal figures have appeared walking through these resonant landscapes.