Sarah Poland
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BIOGRAPHY
Sarah Poland, born 1974, Inverness, Scottish HIghlands.
Sarah began working as a full-time artist in 1998 after studying Fashion Design at Edinburgh College of Art. She moved to West Cornwall in 2000 and then rural West Wales in 2010. In 2015 she studied at Aberystwyth School of Art to learn under the tutelage of master lithographer Paul Croft T.M.P. and gained a distinction for MA in fine art.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and in 2018 Sarah won 1st prize at the Glynn Vivian Open. She has undertaken residencies in Shetland, South-West Ireland and in 2019 was artist in residence at G.S. Artists in Swansea. This was supported with an Arts Council Wales research and development grant.
Recent solo exhibitions include Belgrave Gallery, Cornwall (2018), Oriel Q, Wales (2019), Yr Oriel, Wales (2020).
In 2022 she was awarded a Create grant from Arts Council Wales and National Lottery for a solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery, Swansea UK in May 2023.
The exhibition, SILENCE - THE MESSENGER AND THE METAPHOR, will include painting, botanical colour, immersive installation, textile, work on paper, photography and clothing. There will also be fragments of text from Notebooks Of Eurydice by late painter Partou Zia, a text she has been ‘in conversation’ with throughout the project. This will be her largest exhibition to date and spans five years.
Artist Statement
The presence of landscape and being has always been a source to my work, in particular the ocean and the magical forest cathedral landscape. I have been particularly drawn to Northern and landscapes on the edge, always seeking to live within these spaces.
For five years I lived in my Nomadic Studio, immersed in an ancient oak woodland in West Wales. I wanted to make work literally ‘of the woodland’ and it was here where I explored making my own oak gall ink. This ink has antique histories and in seeking new botanical colours from the environment around me, I now also natural dye some canvases before painting. I seek to develop my creative practice more sustainably in how to source materials while considering the immense value of our wild places and the wider issues of plastic pollution and climate change.
During my time in the woodland I would go for full moon night walks and began making photographic works using a long exposure, which I call Moon Drawings. I combine the oak gall work with these photographic Moon Drawings to create collage and diptychs. With larger paintings and installations I hope to engage physically and spatially as well as conceptually, building relationships between the materials and the abstract, between nature and transformation. When making, I look for surprising relationships and unexpected collaborations between ideas.
Recent paintings are also about breathing, about what we yearn for, and the space created when being caught off guard by something which takes us away from our physical reality for a moment. They are also about beauty.
Using colour and it’s inherent instability, how it changes according to what it is next to, I look to create a shimmer, a vibration through using close tones and by using the support as light source as well as colour experience.
Studio documentary for 2023 solo exhibition 'Silence - The Messenger And The Metaphor'.
Text extracts / Reviews:
'Despite the poetry of her titling, these are not narrative paintings in any real sense until you understand the language of her painting, and it is your possible understanding of that language’s poetry that these paintings celebrate...she exists in her paintings to the same degree that she exists in her landscape, and it would seem that the landscape lives in her in equal measure. ’ ____Richard Blackborow, Belgrave Gallery St. Ives.
'Sarah Poland’s beautifully installed show at Elysium Gallery in Swansea is a peaceful, immersive environment where one can sense the synergistic relationship still possible between humans and the natural world. It represents years of work and exploration and is a beautiful testament to this artist’s desire to live in harmony with her environment.'________________ Elizabeth Hanson, artist, June 2023
'Treasure in Stillness is a dynamic, dramatic exploration of natural colour and movement, lines collide and dance making new tones where they cross, as with all relationships, where energies meet, something greater than the sum of its parts is created. Elements of tribal art are celebrated using paints and inks created from natures own pallet, Sarah makes them herself using oak gall, and iron rust and in this sense the whole process is part of the final works. The space lends itself perfectly with an abundance of light and has allowed Sarah to be unintimidated by size, some canvases are huge. Natural geometry vibrates throughout, tree rings, ripples in ponds, falling rain and snow and in this sense one feels enveloped in something fundamentally close to the Earth, something ancient, almost hieroglyphic at times. The moon is given a platform via a unique photographic technique and is exploited making erratic blurred lines from capturing the heavenly body, aesthetically akin to capturing a ghost in motion, the camera allows the moon to draw. Sarah won the Glynn Vivian Open in 2018 and it’s easy to see why with this bold, kinetic glorious collection.'
________________________________ Clare Ferguson-Walker for G.S. Artists, May 2019
'One of the strongest works exhibited by a Cornish gallery had to be the rugged scene in oil entitled 'Mountain Pass' by Sarah Poland. There is something of the wrestled drawing process of Bomberg or Kossoff in her landscape paintings which arrests the eye and brings you back time and again to the best of her pictures.' Henry Garfit, Artist and Founder of Newlyn School of Art - reviewing the London Art Fair and also on www.artcornwall.org
