About the Artist
Artist Statement
I am an artist who thrives on painting and drawing from life and in nature. I strive to express what I am seeing with an honesty and an emotional response to the subject. .......
I guess this is why I love the impressionists, they were such students of nature and with a few brilliant strokes they said so much with so little. It is so challenging to try and capture the beauty that God has surrounded us with. This challenge seems impossible and keeps me striving to make these simple tools say what my heart wants to say. Creating art gives so much joy. It makes us view our surroundings with great consciousness and the more our lives are lived with great consciousness the richer our art , our life and our surroundings become.
AWARDS/MEMBERSHIPS
Best Vehicle, PleinAir Salon Art Competition from PleinAir Magazine, July 2024
Salmagundi Club, New York City, NY, Member
Semi- Finalist, 13th Annual Plein Air Salon Competition,
Top 100 Finalist Plein Air Salon art Competition, July 2024,
Honorable Mention, Carnegie Visual Arts "Embracing Art XXII Showcase"
Best Drawing, PleinAir Salon Art Competition from PleinAir Magazine, December 2023,
Top 100 finalist PleinAir Salon Art Competition from PleinAir Magazine, December 2023
American Impressionist Society
Oil Painters of America
Portrait Society of America
American Society of Marine Artists
Founder and Organizer of North Alabama Plein Air, since 2010
Artistic Training
Sara has been painting since 2003. Her background in the sciences, with a Ph.D. in optics, along with her love for the study of nature allows her to have a technical as well as artistic understanding of light and color. She has taught students around the country and in Europe and has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the Southeast. Sara has had the pleasure to participate in many plein air events including Cape Ann Plein Air Invitational, the Forgotten Coast Plein Air Invitational and Art in the Open, in Wexford, Ireland.Her artistic training has come from independent studies and plein air painting, along with tutelage from contemporary masters. Early on she spent three years under the mentorship of Murat Kaboulov, a Russian impressionist of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, and more recently studying with Ned Mueller, Huihan Liu and Joe Paquet.
EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS
Denis Diderot & Emerging Artist Grant, Château Orquevaux Artists & Writers Residency, September 2025
Plein Air Montana, Bozeman Art Museum, July 20-26, 2025, one of 28 invited artists to compete
Oil Painters of America National Exhibition, May 27 – June 1, 2025
Plein Air Southwest, Galveston, Tx, May 4-10, 2025
Solo Show, Flourish Fine Art, Huntsville, Alabama May 1,2025
Artist on Location, Knoxville, Tn April 21-25, 2025
Teche Plein Air, New Iberia, La, March 8-15, 2025
Carnegie Visual Art Center, Embracing Art XXIII Exhibition, Decatur Alabama, April 2025
Solo Show, A Southern Perspective, Carnegie Visual Art Center, Decatur Alabama Jan 2025
Cape Ann Plein Air Artist 2024
American Society of Marine Artists, Online Exhibition 10/2024
The Almenara Collection 2024, 4 paintings
4th Annual Associate American Impressionist Society Member Online Exhibition. 2024
Carnegie Visual Art Center, Embracing Art XXII Exhibition, Decatur Alabama, April 2024
8th Annual American Impressionist Society Impressions: Small Works Showcase, Anderson Fine Art Gallery, St. Simons Ga. April 2024
North Carolina Plein Air Art Festival, New Bern, NC, alternate, May 2024
Artist on Location Plein Air, Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN April 2024
Featured Artist – Little Green Store and Gallery October 2023
American Impressionist Society Online Showcase -
September 2020
Art in the Open Exhibition – Wexford, Ireland
August 2019
Featured Artist – Little Green Store and Gallery December 2018
Art in the Open Exhibition – Wexford, Ireland
August 2017
Featured Artist – Little Green Store Gallery
July 2016
Forgotten Coast en Plein Air, Invited Artist, May 2009
Huntsville Land Trust Plein Air Event Invited Artist
September 2008
"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak." Hans Hoffman.
“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
"Color is my day long obsession, joy, and torment." Claude Monet
“A work of art which isn't based on feeling isn't art at all.” – Paul Cézanne.
