Sarah Elder

"I love to travel to different countries, soaking up and embracing the atmosphere, colour and culture of these distant lands...."

Sarah Elder’s own words encapsulate her approach to her work; emotive, imaginative and personal, her paintings enjoy wide acclaim not only for the wildlife she so powerfully portrays, but also for the sometimes exotic but always intriguing locations to which she travels.
 
Now firmly established as a travel and wildlife artist with several awards to her name (including the 2009 BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year), Sarah's work is held in many collections worldwide. Her recent selection, once again as a finalist in four categories for the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year ('World Birds', 'British Birds', 'Endangered Species' and 'Creative Visions') is a testament to her achievement.
 
Sarah's talent lies in her ability to transmit "the spirit of the place", some extremely distant, and to our minds, culturally remote. The scenes she brings to life are at once enticingly unfamiliar yet vibrant in their rendition of landscapes and peoples so seemingly alien to our own.

Movement forms a special concern in her work, whether depicting zebras, cheetahs or gazelles in the plains of Africa; or the slow rhythmic pattern of shepherds and their flocks in the Himalayan pastures. Technically this is often implied by a series of gentle brush strokes coupled with layers of glaze which allow a shimmering translucence to pervade the paintings. This ethereal quality, at times contrasting with the underlying reality of such rural subjects, is characteristic of Sarah's method; yet it is this painterly subtlety and deftness of touch that lends each picture its unique and sympathetic ambiance and allows us to glimpse, through her eyes, the mysteries of these remote worlds.