A Beautiful Puzzle: How Sarah Sedwick Rediscovered Art and Her Own Way of Doing Things
Oil painter, Sarah Sedwick (Ep.22) took stock of her life one day and had a startling realization.
“I got to a point where I thought, Oh, well, maybe that's over. Maybe I'm not going to paint.”
It was a shock to her because at 17 she had been so full of clarity about what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to be an artist. So she chose to attend art school. And everything seemed to be going great.
But then came graduation.
“After I graduated art school, I really did not know what to do,” says Sedwick. “I had graduated with a very good art education but no real direction.”
She began to paint less and less frequently. She got married and moved west to Oregon.
“I would sporadically try [to paint], but I could never get up any momentum. It was really sad for me.”
GOING BIG BY GOING SMALL
Something changed for the artist in 2007. She realized that while she had loved art school, it had left her with all these ideas about what being a real artist meant. It had left Sedwick feeling like she was only a painter if she followed certain rules about size and content.
Then she discovered daily painting and realized that maybe those ideas weren’t true. Artists like Duane Keiser , Carol Marine and Julian Merrow-Smith were painting every day and then sharing them online.
“I discovered this and the idea that a painting could just be small. And it didn't have to be a super huge investment of time and materials. And it didn't have to be a grand subject. It could just be something I saw on my kitchen counter that morning, totally freed me.”
Sedwick began painting every day. Not only did that improve her painting and help her find a style but it helped her begin taking the first, small steps, in building an art career.
LOVE OF OIL PAINTING
Today, Sedwick still paints regularly but not necessarily daily. However some of the ideas of daily painting have definitely stuck. She works fairly small (although a bit bigger every year) and while the artist also paintings portraits, she still turns to still life as her main painting subject.
Her painting medium of choice is oils, which she loves in no small part because of the smell but also because it helped facilitate the way she liked working.
“Oil paint is so rich, and it's so versatile, and it does stay wet longer. And so it lets me keep the same palette working for days and days and days, which is great because I'll mix up like a special palette and then I'll do a series with that unique palette. And especially because I store my pallets in the freezer, they stay good and I can keep using them.”
She also just didn’t like acrylics.
“The plasticky nature of acrylics and the fast drying time,” she says. “I always just felt like I was racing to catch up as it was drying out from underneath me.”
Today, Sedwick has a bit of the opposite problem with drying times and sometimes resorts to unconventional means to get her paintings dried and ready to send off to a customer or a show.
INTIMIDATION FACTORS
Many of Sedwick’s students come from other media like watercolor and acrylic.
“I tell them, you know, congratulations, you're on the easy side of the street. Now you've made it! You found us!”
Sedwick understands the intimidation factor that comes with oils but encourages people to not get overwhelmed.
“Really the only difference with oils is that we need something instead of water to thin the paint to clean the brushes.”
She encourages people to get started with paint and something to thin that paint. There’s solvents and mediums but “when you're just starting you really don't need all that stuff.”
She also recognizes that while she doesn’t run a toxic free painting practice, there are options today that weren’t available a decade ago.
“But one of my main things is this doesn't have to be complicated. It can be simplified... the materials especially.”
THE POWER OF PLANNING
Sedwick believes in planning.
“I have a lot of the process that goes on before the brush hits the canvas. And the more time I spend in the preparatory stages, the more, I get to just relax and enjoy the party when it starts. When the brush hits the canvas, I'm really prepared.”
Before she draws or paintings anything, she sets up her still life. This is where she does her primary thinking about color, shape, and repetition.
Next, she pulls out her viewfinder and begins thinking about how to translate what she sees to the page. She’s also thinking about the format she thinks best for this set up. Square vs rectangle for example.
For a long time Sedwick did thumbnails and 2-value studies (notans) but with experience she can now do some of that thinking in her head and go straight to a black and white painting. The black and white painting helps her be certain she has her values (and therefore her composition) right.
Then comes color mixing, which the artist absolutely does not rush. She looks at all the elements in her painting and mixes colors to match. That way she has a starting point from which to work.
“It's not paint-by-number,” says Sedwick. “I am not pre mixing with my palette for every single brushstroke. I'm trying to give myself some base notes to come back to, that I'm going to expand on..It's nice to have that starting point.”
A BEAUTIFUL PUZZLE
Even though it took the artist a bit of time to find her footing post art school. She’s glad she went.
“I never regretted my decision to go to art school.”
In fact, she says she’s more grateful she did because of the foundational knowledge it gave her.
She does acknowledge that there was no way an art school could have known the future. When Sedwick went to art school, the internet wasn’t part of selling or teaching. And that’s ok in Sedkwick’s mind.
“That's what's so beautiful about the art world,” she says “it's so diverse in terms of how we all piece it together, what our careers look like. They're just this puzzle. And what I'm doing today really didn't exist. 20 years ago.”
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