SARAH ARNETT

Modern, elegant and bursting with colour, Sarah’s work draws on her life experiences: growing up in Zimbabwe, traveling through India, and living in the seaside city of Brighton. In her artworks, the power of place is fused with illusion and theatricality.

These are more than flat images; they’re stories that invite you all the way in. Fizzing with surreal energy, Sarah’s dreamscapes mix the real with the imagined: film characters and works of architecture appear tangled with wild foliage and mystical animals. Rich in colour and pattern, Sarah’s worlds leap from the page or jump from the walls, the furniture, the fabric of the room. They’re compositions in time, like a frozen tableau or film still. Linger here a moment. Indulge in the sights, the sounds, the gentle buzz of this unknown paradise. Its a place to dream, to escape, and to lose yourself in colour.

An attention to process is at the heart of everything Sarah creates; it’s been evolving since her early days as a weaver and her fire for experiment is still burning.

Her colourful artworks begin with an initial, hand-drawn idea. Working from her studio in Brighton, Sarah combines these sketches with digital illustration, painting, and original photography, layering as she goes. Educated in the tactile arts of weaving and dying, Sarah’s use of digital processes is meticulous and highly skilled. A kind of reverse taxidermy, every tiny element is hand drawn and gradually built-up to create a rich and complex final image. The plumage on a bird is never just an illustration of plumage, but the hand-drawn creation of each and every feather, intricately layered for depth, texture, and delicate beauty.

These digital drawings are then combined with hand-painted backgrounds and self-taken photographs, which create that surreal mix of the actual and the imagined that Sarah is known for. Each work is a collage of endless ingredients, painstakingly composed onto a range of tactile surfaces including paper, textiles, lacquered wood and concrete. Finally, Sarah breathes dazzling life into her work with hand-cut sections of gold leaf, antique sequins, vintage beads, and crystals to create luxury texture and finish.