Congratulations to Sarah Jacobs for earning her place as a Finalist in the Boynes Emerging Artist Award 7th Edition!

Who are you?

During high school in the small town where I grew up, I wanted to do anything but be an artist because I was afraid of being poor. My mom studied art in college, and still paints prolifically, but she wasn’t taught how to pursue it as a business back in the 1970’s and she is shy about her art, so she has always had regular jobs, like retail. I had never met an artist who made a living at it. Eventually I realized I had to study art because there was nothing else I liked to do. I studied Art History and then painting in grad school at the Hoffberger School at MICA where I finally encountered artists who were living off their work and thriving. It took me years of building up my portfolio while working jobs and then teaching art at a university before I quit to pursue art fulltime just this May. My partner, Shawn, got an opportunity in a small city called Erie, and when I learned how affordable it is, I quit my teaching job, cashed in my retirement, and joined him. I have begun painting murals, I take portrait commissions, and I am making paintings for a 2023 exhibition at Zynka Gallery in Pittsburgh.

What inspired you to utilize painting as a medium?

I have always painted. My mom encouraged me to paint when I was little so I would quiet down so she could paint. What is new is that I have been incorporating digital collaging into my painting process. I sometime collage old paintings or new watercolor-designed motifs into new compositions, have those printed on canvas, and then paint more on top of them.

How would you describe your artwork?

The thread that connects my various series of work is a Baroque-style of aesthetic drama: rich colors and bold lighting schemes paired with a more-is-more attitude that welcomes repetition, patterns, and sensuality. My portrait series, The Carnival, to which my Boynes Emerging Artist Award finalist painting, Sunday Morning, belongs veers a little away from that drama because I painted it during the pandemic, and I really just wanted to make something happy.

Can you discuss the inspiration and thought process behind "sunday morning"?

“Sunday Morning” is a portrait of my boyfriend, Shawn. During the pre-vaccine pandemic, when I painted this, he was a Neuro Intensive Care Unit nurse and he regularly worked overtime treating covid patients because of overflow from the covid ward. He didn’t get enough sleep, so I painted him sleeping in. He has a little smirk as if he’s having a good dream.

Can you walk us through the technical steps of creating "sunday morning"?

Shawn is oil painted. The rest is more complicated. I made watercolor paintings of the chrysanthemum and white rose, which you see in the pattern. The white orchid in the pattern is part of a previous oil painting. I scanned the three flowers into Photoshop and turned them into a repeating pattern. I had that pattern printed on cotton. I wrapped Shawn in the cotton and photographed it wrapped around his body. I had the photograph of the cotton and the background of the three-flower pattern printed onto the canvas. Shawn (head and arms) was a blank spot in the printing. I then painted him in with oil paint and added a bit of oil elsewhere to create the backlit effect.

What do you hope to communicate to an audience with your work?

For most of the portraits in this series I interviewed the subjects to learn about important symbols in their lives. For example, Andrew Rincón (the subject of the painting Like Romeo) is a comic playwright. He asked me to incorporate the national flower of Colombia, the cattleya trianae orchid and other purple orchids because they are his mother’s favorite flower, and his favorite, the sunflower. Since he is a playwright, I incorporated tomatoes and roses into a pattern (to symbolize a bad and good opening night of a play).

The piece had that pattern, one with purple orchids, and Andrew has a gold leaf halo in the shape of a sunflower.My other series of work are symbolic too. In Begin Again, for example, poppies have traditionally represented death in Western cultural understanding of flower symbology because their seeds can be made into opium. Saplings are newly sprouting plants, representing rebirth. The overgrowing foliage peeking through suggests the fecundity of nature. The curves in the composition make an imperfect circle for the eye to follow around and around the composition. I made that choice to further emphasize the idea of a cycle of life. Even within one lifetime we often must pick up and start over again.

Have you experimented with other mediums?

Yes. In 2010 I had a studio visit with Jose Roca while in at an artist residency in Cali, Colombia. He reminded me that painting is not the right choice for every artwork and that medium is as much a decision that communicates something to the viewer as subject, composition, or color. Can you imagine, for instance, if Felix Gonzalez-Torres has painted Perfect Lovers or Portrait of Ross in LA? It wouldn’t have worked. Since I was so painting-reliant I took a year off and only worked in other media. I designed a billboard, made some really odd photography, sculpted, collaged, etc.

Although I still often paint, I think about other options first and sometimes use those. I incorporate other ways of working into my paintings too, like the pieces that involve digital printing. I have also built-up surfaces to create 3-D paintings, incorporated mirrors, and used assemblage in my paintings.

Can you talk about your biggest learning experience during the process of creating your work?

I taught university art for seven years. I wanted to teach my students all oil techniques, so I had to teach myself or reacquaint myself with some like multi-layer translucent glazing. I also hadn’t studied studio art (I studied Art History) as an undergrad, so I hadn’t had Design classes, which I ended up teaching, and therefore having to teach myself. I found myself incorporating techniques and compositional strategies I taught my students into my own art.

Can you discuss your biggest success since starting your artistic journey?

I can’t have a tattoo because I change my mind too often and would want to change it soon after designing it. Likewise, I cannot paint the same subject matter year after year. That can be a liability when selling and seeking representation. Some dealers find an artist who did abstracts, and now does portraits, and florals, and “who knows what next” hard to market. Despite that my artwork has a recognizable throughline. I’m proud when someone says, “Sarah, I knew that was your painting as soon as I saw it.” My biggest success is having a definite look that is my own; Baroque meets more-is-more contemporary, with symbolism and just a hint of cheekiness. It offers me more freedom to paint what I want.

Can you tell something you wish you had known before or when you began your career that would have really helped?

I learned a little bit all along the way, so it’s hard to pin down one thing I would want to know. I started therapy about a year and a half ago for anxiety, not art, but I have found it very helpful for both. I developed many ideas for artworks from the practice of therapy and it helped give me the courage to quit my teaching job and move away to be a full time artist.

What projects are you working on currently? Can you discuss them?

My ongoing new series (not yet shown online) is for now called the Space Series until I think of a better title. These multimedia paintings are often figurative, they depict deep space including several skies, unusual vantage points, and zoomed-in or zoomed-out cropping. They are slated for a 2023 exhibition at Zynka, so I can’t show the finished ones yet, but you can see part of one that is in-progress in the photo of me.

These are a big departure from my past paintings which had shallow visual space, meaning they only look like you could reach your arm into them up to the elbow, if that. Imagine a photo of a brick wall vs an Ansel Adams landscape photo.

As a finalist, do you have any advice for artists who want to submit to awards, competitions, residencies, etc.?

This is not advice I would give for most things in life, but for art submissions follow the rules. I’ve been on the other end of judging applicants, and it makes it so much easier when we answer the questions and stick to the requested formats. On a more uplifting note, please keep applying when you don’t get an award. Joyce Kozloff, member of the American Pattern and Decoration Movement and Feminist Art Movement and a mentor and friend of mine, told me that she applied to the Rome Prize every year, year after year, until she got in. I apply for many things, and I sometimes get in. I often don’t. That isn’t a slight. They may just be looking for something else at the moment.

Lastly, I like to ask everyone what advice they would give to their fellow artists/photographers, what is your advice?

I once asked another artist if my work was getting too weird and I got the best advice. “Let your freak flag fly.”

To view more of Sarah Jacobs’ work

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