About

For enquiries about available work, upcoming exhibitions and commissions

I work slowly on multiple pieces with each painting taking months to complete. Suki and Hugh Gallery and Whitewall Art Projects carry new work in their stock rooms. Enquiries about commissions and upcoming exhibitions are most welcome.

Care of wax and egg tempera paintings

The wax used in these paintings is pure bees wax from a variety of sources. Being a natural product it occasionally develops a pale white bloom over the surface of the painting, sometimes years after making. This can be treated by placing the painting in gentle sunlight for 5 or 10 mins only, until the wax warms and the bloom disappears. Avoid touching the surface while warm. I haven’t worked out why some paintings bloom, and some don’t, but it seems to occur more often in cold weather and in storage.

Avoid hanging or storing wax paintings where hot afternoon summer sun will reach them.

To dust use a soft lint free cloth or soft brush and a light touch. Any rubbing may burnish the wax and alter the surface.

Behind the work

Sara grew up in Melbourne and studied classical music before deciding to focus on painting. She travelled through most of her twenties, spending years living and painting in Europe, Japan and India before moving to the NSW Far South Coast in 1995. After completing a BA of Visual Arts Honours in Print media and Drawing at the ANU School of Art (2006) and a BA in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Canberra (2013) she in now based in the Bega Valley where she paints and works occasionally as a book and paper conservator.

‘The intersection of meditation and visual art is my field of focus and I am fascinated with the ability of art to transmit sublime or transcendent states. My art practice has for a long time been concerned with the interconnectedness of all things. After years living in Japan and India a strong interest in Buddhism and meditation is combined with an increasing sense of love for this earth crying out for us to respect her and be more considerate in our actions and their consequences.

In these extraordinary times we are inhabiting, all creative expression is in some way or other responding to the reality of climate crisis. The last thousand or so years humans have increasingly treated the earth as a fragmented abundance of materials we are entitled to exploit. For our very survival we need to start recognising and acting on the fact that we are all utterly connected. There is a grassroots Buddhist ecology movement growing around the world that uses the symbolism of Indira’s net, found in ancient Buddhist texts. Indira’s net is described as having a multifaceted diamond at each intersection of every thread. Each diamond reflecting every other, each being a centre of the universe looking outward, just as every one of us feels our own self to be the centre of our universe, and at the same time inextricably linked to every other thing.

The net is a constantly reoccurring theme that haunts my work. The process of making the paintings that I do is slow, chant-like, a kind of meditation in action. Surfaces are built up of dozens of layers of wax, egg tempera and washing back of layers, before carving the final lines and nets into the surface with an etching tool, revealing a slow rhythmic notation of the web that connects us all. The process of making, and the quiet energy that it generates, is done with the hope to draw the viewer into a more contemplative space with a possibility to feel the world around us in a more expansive and receptive way.’