Sarah Gillespie lives in Devon, England and works full-time as a painter, typically making tiny oil sketches outside in the summer months, and then very large studio canvases and charcoals in the winter. As a student, she studied 16th and 17th century techniques at the Atelier Neo-Medici in Paris. Today, Gillespie adheres to the simple truths that make landscape a perennially significant art form: above all, attentiveness to the nature of the world we live in and the place it will always occupy in the poetic imagination.
A coastal scene, Sunyata is painted with a unique intensity. Through this intensity, Sarah has found expression for a range of moods that encompass the whole human condition—awe, grief, anger, and joy are all represented here in haunting forms. These are the emotions that inspired the work and they are expressed metaphorically and spiritually, directly and indirectly in her works: her awe at the beauty of the natural world touched by the hand of the divine; her anger at the willful destruction of our planet and its resources; her grief in the form of a wave crashing against rocks; and her joy and exhilaration as sunlight bursts through the branches of a willow tree. Sunyata was directly inspired by lines from Keats’ “When I have Fears:”
Then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink
Greenwich Gallery, Greenwich, Connecticut
Waterhouse & Dodd, New York, NY (label verso)
Private Collection, Greenwich, Connecticut