Sara paints with very gestural mark making, and this painting is part of her new body of work which expresses Sara’s thoughts about nature, the environment and mankind. It is painted on paper using earth pigment paints which Sara has foraged from coasts and hills in South West England. Sara comments,
“It’s a bit more spare than most of the layered earth pigment paintings I’ve been making, but I feel it is absolutely complete and says everything it needs to say as it is. I’m really liking the lightness of being of these strange, almost undersea-type tree-like forms – and everything they articulate about our precarious plantlife right now.”
These paintings bring us into uncompromising proximity with the earth. Created using paints made with earth pigments foraged locally and from across the SW of England, these paintings echo the annual cycles of plant growth and the deep layers and cycles of geological time. Painted in the tradition of botanical art, these interpretations of food plants, including roots, become curious specimens, intended to document and archive species. Appearing as underwater forests, the fundamental life-giving relationship between earth and water is suggested here.
These paintings take as their subject, lettuce and cauliflower plants which have been left to go to seed in Sara’s own vegetable garden. These humble subjects communicate the close relationship of the artist with her garden and her attitude towards self-sufficiency, sustainable relationships with food and the environment more broadly.
Currently the work is priced as unframed, to allow ease of transport. We have shown how it could look in a dark wood frame as a suggestion. Once framed, you should allow for a wall space of at least 170 x 120 cm.
