Biography of Sarah Graham
Born in Edinburgh in 1973, Sarah Graham is an artist known for her large-scale paintings and drawings that depict exotic plants, flowers and insects. Inspired by a lifelong fascination with the natural world, her works possess a majestic and magnificent quality. Sarah Graham does not create botanical paintings because as she explains herself, her works are based on a personal interpretation of her subjects rather than any scientific understanding. Her twisting and flowering forms are uniquely beautiful and are born out of a childhood interest and deep knowledge of nature.
Often abstract and surreal, Sarah Graham’s works depict the mystery of the plant kingdom and demonstrate the artist’s search for spiritual meaning. She uses pure charcoal, graphite and increasingly draws on handwoven calligraphy paper using ink from plants and fish. Such materials allow her to concentrate on form and line. She also executes the drawings within her studio without the original source which enables her “to bestow its parts with an individual figurative detachment and suggestiveness” and means she can construct her own abstract visual language. When discussing her creative practice, Sarah Graham explains that she “explores on foot” and “gravitates to strong, architectural forms, often imbued with a sense of metamorphic meaning, anything that Nature throws up or has left along her way.”
Between 1992 and 1996 Sarah Graham completed two MA’s at Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art in History of Art and Fine Art. She then travelled across Australia, the Far East and Turkey for many years, culminating her trip in a journey on horse-back across Central Asia in 2001. Sarah Graham also lived for many years in the USA and worked for Antiques Dealer John Hobbs. She now lives and works in Chelsea, London. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Sims Reed Gallery, The Bankside Gallery, Lyndsey Ingram and Waterhouse & Dodd, all in London as well as at Galerie Maximillian, Aspen, New York.
