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, Aug 2025
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 Society of Marine Artists, Signature Member
American Impressionist Society
Oil Painters of America
Portrait Society of America
Founder and Organizer of North Alabama Plein Air, since 2010
Sara Beth Fair
With more than 20 years of experience as a teacher and painter, Sara is nationally recognized artist as a signature member of the American Society of Marine Artists, a member of the Salmagundi Club and has participated in national shows for the American Impressionist Society, the Salmagundi Club and the Oil Painters of America. She has received multiple awards from the Plein Air Salon and has been invited to participate in numerous plein air events across the country, including the Cape Ann Plein Air Invitational, the Forgotten Coast Plein Air Invitational receiving special recognition for many of her works in these plein air shows. Her artistic training has come from independent studies 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.
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. Sara Beth’s style can be characterized as Expressive Impressionism; “I would like my art to not only convey light and color and have a sense of place, ie impressionism, but be rooted in conveying an emotion and feeling. I strive for these and am still on this journey.”
EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS
Salmagundi Club, SCNY 154th Annual fall auctions, October 2025
Denis Diderot & Emerging Artist Grant, Château Orquevaux Arti,sts & Writers Residency, September 2025 and Permanent Collection
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.
