Sensuality of Being - new Lewes art show

Sarah is based in Lewes and has been painting since 1978. She is part of an artistic family: her mother was a weaver, her father an architect, and they influenced her interest in colour, form and texture. Later, she was inspired and moved by artists including Henry Moore, Mark Rothko, Auguste Rodin and, more recently, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Constantin Brancusi.

This exhibition, Sensuality of Being, sums up Sarah’s core interest in exploring the sensual forms of the body in movement and stillness. As she says, she delights in both solidity and more ethereal qualities of being, evoking an emotional engagement and connection in the viewer. Sarah’s love and use of pencils and charcoals are the foundation of her practice, often introducing coloured chalks before venturing into a rich palette of oil paints.

“The touch of my pencil across a page, charcoal in the grain of the paper, and in the creases and crevices of my finger-tips; the magical experience of a form, often the landscape of the body, space, light and dark emerging, together with the textures, aromas, and colours of oil paints, exploring movement and mood across a canvas, all inform and inspire my essential relationship of being in the world,” she said.

This exhibition will include some of the paintings from a body of work inspired by Rodin’s Kiss, and very recently, Kiss by Brancusi. Sarah has explored and expressed various aspects of intimacy, touch and connection with her use of oil paint.

Sarah’s interests and work in Oriental philosophy, spiritual practices and as an acupuncturist, influence her approach to her creativity, beauty and harmony, which can loosely be called “figuratively abstract”, she explains.

As part of the exhibition, she will be talking about her work – In Conversation with Sarah Bristow, at the Star Brewery Gallery, on Saturday, October 28, 2.30-3.30pm. Star Brewery Gallery features a monthly-changing programme of artwork.