Sarah Needham

Artist’s Statement
My work is engaged with the interconnected  effects of trade, people, place, story and memory on identity.  Using hand mixed oils with raw pigments I create abstract images which resonate with forgotten stories, creating spaces to remember.  

The indigo series use fair traded indigo as the pigment of choice. Both because of its amazing and slightly unpredictable capacity for colour variations and interaction with oil painting media and because of the  history of indigo in international trade which reaches back to classical times.

The Lost girl series are a meditation on the role of memory, lost story and identity within the context of contemporary society and use traditional media to link back to the history of art, mark-making and what it means to be human.

My current work is an attempt at creating a conversation between the quiet symbolism that occurs in my work by using these carefully selected pigments, so that in creating the work I am performing an act of remembrance  of the role of trade and mark making in creating the culture and society we live in.  The form of the work, creating space on a flat surface, is an invitation to the viewer to  fall in, to get a little lost and to remember.  Therefore creating a link between the past and current lived experience.