Contact

email: sarahjarrettartist@icloud.com

Statement about my works

I define myself as a Contemporary Collage Artist.

I use digital and analog processes working in a variety of media. The main thread running through all my images is thehuman relationship with nature and the natural world portrayed with a sense of mystery and wonder. My digital works are ethereal and dreamlike with an otherwordly aesthetic. I am particularly interested in flowers and plants as metaphors.I hope to transport my viewers to a world that is enchanting and mysterious. Soft, muted colours lend a dreamlike feel to my work. The most important part of my creative process is in making images that have a unique emotional resonance with my audience.

My work has been commissioned and published globally in books, advertising, magazines, product design, games and puzzles, cards and stationary. I exhibit each year in international exhibitions, in 2023 showing my work in India, London, Norway and Germany.

I am currently working on some larger scale oil paintings.

Collage is your bread and butter. What do you find to be so alluring about working with collage?

I describe the process of collage as transformation.

It’s the alchemy of altering, changing in highly creative ways that I find so engaging and attracted by.

When I track that process back, even at Art College in the ~1990s where I studied Photography and Animation, I was always experimenting with photographic processes in the darkroom and painting and scratching on prints to alter them sometimes to the point of destruction. I was truly lucky to be in an environment with other really creative people where we all inspired each other with ideas, discussions, books and creative practices. It was pretty wonderful. It instilled in me a philosophy that if you really believe in something creatively you can do it successfully and the mistakes you make are part of that learning and growth. Another facet of the attraction to collage are the materials themselves. I started paper cutting to start with to make illustration work when my children were still tiny and I remember going up to London on the train with a portfolio of paper cut work to show Random House and just at the right time they were looking for an artist to fully illustrate a book about health and well being and commissioned me on the spot. That was a terrific launch, I was doing a lot of cards, stationary and book work cutting out with a tiny little pair of embroidery scissors often late into the night while the kids were asleep. I really loved it. So it was a slow journey from cut and paste to digital collage but it slowly evolved over the years. I’ve never lost my real passion for collage or tired of it in any way. One aspect that has been really beneficial to me in my career is being hugely productive and that’s down to an insatiable curiosity to keep learning and discovering.

How would you describe your relationship with art? What does art mean to you?

Art has really become life for me.

It’s no longer a job but instead a way of being.

It’s become so ingrained in everything that I do and the way I live my life that I cannot see it as something separate. I really love to connect with other creatives and understand how they work and make. I’ve been lucky to work with other artists, writers and musicians on many different projects and it feeds my soul and makes me feel good. I have a lot of respect for other creatives who have real longevity in their art careers where their practice is multidisciplinary. It has also been a great friend and comfort to me in difficult times, I’m thinking particularly back to 2022 when my father died after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease and it helped me to get through some very dark days. I felt I was able to express some of that sorrow and loss in my work despite generally not making autobiographical pieces. Art has made me stronger, more self disciplined, more curious, fearless.

Would you consider yourself ever evolving as an artist?

Yes definitely because creativity is never static and I always strive to move forwards with my ideas.

I’m not complacent, I’m restless. I always want to get better and I work hard. Work is really a vocation and I spend most of my time doing it. My work definitely evolves in stages where you can see distinct influences and colour palettes through time. I think and hope I’ve become more skilful in what I do, that the images have become more richly layered, push at the boundaries of what collage is, create a sense of magic or wonder.

Since you use a mixture of digital and analogue processes in your work I was wondering what some of your go-to techniques and materials are?

My go to creative tool is definitely my iPad for digital collage.

I make all my digital work on an iPad Pro and mainly use one app Procreate.

I tidy finished images up on my Mac after so that I can print on large formats.

In making analog work, I have lots of collected materials but I also make painted papers to make some pieces. I’m a big fan of flea markets and car boots for collecting collage materials.

My more recent foray into painting is always oils as first choice. I love the slowing down of everything painting with oils and learning patience in the slow dry. It’s such a contrast to the immediacy of digital work.

Collage is an art form that transforms one thing into something else. How does it feel to be able to use and manipulate something and create something new from it?

It’s definitely the biggest draw for me. The alchemy. Breathing new life into an existing idea.

A lot of things happen accidentally in a good way which is why I don’t like pre-planning too much.

I trust in the process. Lots of things go wrong and don’t get used but that’s how you learn. Sometimes an absolute gem emerges by chance and that’s great but you have to accept that doesn’t happen every time. I enjoy the challenge of bringing together very disparate elements and bringing them together in a harmonious way. One of the main areas my work is used in and commissioned for is book illustration so composition has to be really strong.

I spend a lot of time looking to find inspiration, on screens, in books, in galleries, in music.

Art, stories, conversations, music, film all shape and colour my thinking. Music maybe the most. I listen to a very diverse wealth of music while I’m working and it helps me get my mind into the right place for making.

I always say in interviews that one of the most important things in my work, is creating pieces that have a strong emotional resonance with my audience. That does really matter to me.

Your work transcends so many boundaries! You label yourself as a Contemporary Collage Artist but you do so much more! You’re also an animator, oil painter, photographer, textile worker, etc. Why do you choose explore so many mediums instead of sticking to just one?

It’s the restless spirit and the real enjoyment of making. All of these ways of working are very different but they all yield their own rewards. I’m naturally curious and like to understand how things work. I’ve already hinted that art has become life. No two days are the same. There’s a pattern of moving through different processes through the course of the day. I wake very early every day, I run and I bathe in ice cold water down in the meadow listening to the world wake up, birdsong, deer, watching the sun emerge and the morning starts very productively making a daily collage with tea. It’s almost meditative which is why I like to be up early, so peaceful and quiet. I jump between digital work, painting, making and back again. I work until late. It’s so much more than a job now my children are grown up. It’s a way of being.

Do you think working in so many different mediums has given you a creative edge and advantage for your collage work that you may not have had without exploring these disciplines?

I think is been holistic, all of these experiences coming together to shape my work. My career spans a long period of time and I’ve been very fortunate with the creative opportunities that have been presented to me. I’m always very thankful for that. I feel so so lucky every day. Immense gratitude to be able to connect with an audience in the way that I have. I try not to analyse what it is or what it means. I try to just stay true to myself, my ideas, my dreams.

Nature and the natural world is an important part of your overall style. How would you describe your own relationship with nature and the natural world?

It feels ingrained within me. I’ve lived most of my life in the countryside and have had a lifelong fascination with folklore, natural medicine, myth and magyk. Heavily influenced by reading constantly in my childhood - including books by Alan Garner - The Weirdstone of Brisingamen & The Owl Service, Susan Hill The Dark is Rising, Lucy M Boston The Children of Green Knowe, CS Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia, Ursula K Le Guin The Books of Earthsea and many more. I think these stories introduced the idea that the natural world is full of both beauty and darkness and a desire to believe in something very magical and strange. I’ve never lost that fascination through my life. Living in the countryside I’m drawn to recording the landscapes where I’m living particularly in the winter when everything is stripped back and feels beautifully bleak. I was lucky to live on East Dartmoor for a year, right on the moor itself and that was the place I’ve felt most connected to truly wild places. The Moors have a really stark beauty but also a brooding darkness. These experiences definitely inform my work.

Plants and flowers are a running theme in your work as you use them as metaphors. Many flowers and plants bloom and adorn your female subjects. Can you elaborate further on this theme in your work?

A lifelong love of flowers and plants has resulted in an ongoing inclusion of them with my work. Sometimes they are purely decorative and at other times symbols and metaphors. In many of my portraits they contained internally and externally extending the link with the natural world. I love the theatricality that flowers can create in elaborate headdresses mixed with leaves and birds. I really love looking at the old botanicals and the way they are depicted.

Do you find reflections of yourself and your life within your art?

My work is not autobiographical. I try not to give specific meanings to my works but instead hope there is a connection with the viewer, an emotional resonance. I’m a visual storyteller and I think there are some elements of me within the work but if there are they are subtle traces. What I do reflect are my dreams and ideas about the world.

Where do you see your art going in the future? Do you plan to break into other art mediums and mix them with your current body of work?

I recently started painting again much more seriously and I hope to make some really large scale works in the next year. Combining that with my digital work, I already feel at full stretch! So no plans at the moment to introduce any other ways of working into the mix. I really want to publish a book of my collage work. I feel happy and at a good place with my work at the moment. Always so thankful for the opportunities I’ve had and excited about the future.

Testimonials

Daria Polichetti

Writer. Illustrator. Artist

Sarah’s work has emerged as a strong new voice in the mobile arts. From delicately rendered botanicals to sparse landscapes to abstracted portraits, she has a wide range—but her portraits in particular stand out. Rendered against bright color fields, her subjects are isolated and altered in a manner that evokes early 20th century expressionist painters. Individually, each piece seeks to define the character and emotional qualities of the subject, while together they begin to paint the portrait of a larger group: individual but connected.
Sarah’s work may not be traditional when viewed in the context of photography itself, but it follows a long tradition of abstract and expressionist painting as well as the more contemporary digital arts, making it an interesting example of how successfully the mobile arts have begun to expand beyond the boundaries of pure photography.
She is also an excellent colorist. She has a good eye for capturing emotion in her initial shots, and her touch is expressive and free. In the end, color, texture and linework all combine together to merge her photography and painting in a seamless, evocative way while highlighting emotion, character and story in each portrait.

Andy Royston

Photographer

More than any artist in the last year she’s produced work that’s made me stop to take in her striking, beautifully composed and deftly colored work.
This year has seen mobile artists emerge who show a keen appreciation of older photographic and art techniques. There’s something familiar in Sarah’s pieces that pay subtle homage to mediaeval art, Japanese Ukiyo-e and contemporary illustration.
Her portraits are moving and funny by turns and her use of color in photographic landscapes is exemplary; she’s developed a way of flattening perspectives and creating layouts that feel timeless like a 19th Century painting. I’ve spent many weeks trying to find a way to do this in my own landscape work, and frankly she’s superb at this. She has a great sense of color control; when to reign it back, when to let it free, and when to create a splash.

Misho Baranovic

Photographer and community engagement practitioner focusing on social connectivity facilitated by mobile technology.

With a clarity of vision and exquisite technical skill, Sarah Jarrett is a deserving winner of this year’s MPA Photographer/Artist of the Year Award. Sarah is one of the new generation of mobile artists who continue to blur the lines between photography and painting.
Her bold color palette and pared back stroke adds an intimacy to her portraiture. Sarah’s ‘Cool Britannia’ portrait series is impressive in it’s ability to offer an insight into individual expression while providing a broader commentary on the importance of British counter culture through the decades.
I keep going back to Sarah’s “Boy about Town’ portrait, a young man in mod clothing and a WHO patch, back straight, chin up. His stare encapsulates Sarah’s work, a challenge to the establishment: mobile photography and art has arrived.

Daniel Berman

documentary filmmaker, photographer and founder of the Mobile Photography Awards

Sarah’s “Cool Britannia” series (included below) is an impressive collection of insights into youth culture in the UK – taken together, I see a generation’s worth of journeys, the desire for acceptance, a seeker’s motivation for meaning within the context of fashion and music and the friction between social acceptance/personal expression. Above all, I see a window into a kind of celebration of misfits whose eyes are vivid yet who hide behind sartorial creativity in their eternal search for identity. I think her work in this regard may be the most cohesive expression I’ve ever seen in the mobile arts – a step beyond the inward look of our finest self-portraitists. She also has carved out an utterly unmistakable and original visual style unlike any other working in the genre.
Her ability to capture timeless expressions in a photograph and bring them to an entirely new level of visual creativity with exceptional technique makes Sarah, in my eyes, the most exciting artist working in our medium today.

Clients

Amazon Original Publishing Rolling Stone Magazine Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine
Woodmansterne Eeboo
Art Angels UK
Conran Octopus
Marshall Editions
Artsmile
Simon Elvin
Wilko
Editions Ltd US
Unicorn Fine Art
Asda
Tesco
Random House UK & AUS & ESP
Penguin
A Vue d'Oeil
Wendy Lamb Books
Elegant Clutter UK
Sceptre
Polygon
Pocket
Canvas Pop
Presses de la Cite
John Lewis
Fleuvenoir
W.N.Norton & Co
Xander
Roman
Sherwin Williams
T Mobile
Portland Opera US
Simon & Schuster UK & US
Roman
Klett Cotta
Alianza Literaria
Seix Barrel Darkside Books Harper Collins Giunti St Martins Press Darwin & Verne Paradores Hotels Spain Quantum Way Marchand De Feuilles Kompani Giraff Sweden Meridian Uitgevers Peter Millard & Partners Jolie Laide Wines Graphique de France

Wish List

Illustrate a children’s book Continue to develop my paintings and exhibit more, work and dream bigger
Publish a book of my work
Art Residency Continue to collaborate with musicians and writers

Current Obsession

Magyk

Exhibitions

LA Mobile Arts Festival 2012

Soho Gallery for Digital Art, New York February 22-28 2013

‘Exposure’ A Mobile Photography Exhibition, CS Gallery, Columbus, Ohio 16 – 26 March 2013

Arthaus, San Francisco, CA April 05- June 30 2013

The Holcim Gallery, Milton, Ontario, Canada June 24- July 13 2013

‘Phone Art’ Alexander Brest Museum, Florida September 2013

Mobile Photo Connect Conference in San Francisco, Terra Gallery and Event Venue October 2013

Obscura Gallery, Melbourne, Australia November 21 – December 28 2013

MIRA Mobile Prize, Porto, Portugal September 2014

Pocket Vistas: A Mobile Photography Exhibition for Landscapes, Nature & Wildlife Images. Ontario, Canada. September 03-28 2014

Self Portraits Mobile Camera Club, Paris June/July 2015

L'Ambassade de Roumanie, Paris 'Ceci N'est Pas Un Selfie' February 2017

'Monsters' Mobile Camera Club, Paris May 2018

‘Selfies’ Atelier Oblik, Clichy, France organised by Pauline Escande Gauguie & Bertrand Naivin 30 March - 29 April 2019

‘Small Format Show’, 92 artists who reflect for relationships between nature and anthropological perspective of landscape, public and domestic spaces, technologies, innovation and ancestral knowledge. Museo El Castillo, Colombia June/July 2021

‘Kaleidoscope’ International Exhibition of Contemporary Women’s Collage & Assemblage Frauen Museum, Wiesbaden, Germany March 05 - May 07 2023

Artdom 3 Exhibition Mumbai, India Feb 2023

Artdom 3 Exhibition Oslo, Norway April 2023

Awards

Winner of ‘Mobile Artist/Photographer of the Year’ at the Mobile Photography Awards 2012/13

Honourable mentions for Portraits and Still Life in the American Aperture Awards 2013

Shortlisted for IPA Quarterly September 2013

Shortlisted MIRA Mobile Prize 2014

Shortlisted Pocket Vistas 2014

In 2012 I self published my first Art book of my Landscape pictures

'A Landscape of Dreams'