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 acclaimed for her beautiful watercolours of the landscape and relishes the process by creating colour by deftly controlling ‘wet on wet’ washes and adding light touches of expressive splatter and drybrush.
Watercolour is her ‘go to’ process when working at speed en plein air and it allows her to respond to changes of light and weather – including spots of rain which magically pepper sketches.
In the studio, she reinterprets these studies and is delighted to have been selected to represent Scotland for several years at the international watercolour exhibition Fabriano en Aquarello in Italy.
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.
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.
Sarah was awarded two bursaries: Visual Artist and Craft Maker (VACMA) Awards 2023-24 and 2024-2025 and this was a catalyst in supporting her return to fine art printmaking in lithograph and collagraph at Edinburgh Printmakers. She was able to benefit from the workshop environment, the knowledge of specialist technicians and equipment and produce work which has a different alchemy.
