SarahNeedham
Sarah Needham starts by making her own oil paints. She chooses
pigments for the role they play in the history of trade and visual
culture from the prehistoric era to the present day, so that the
pigments hold a kind of quiet symbolism within a piece. She
researches and paints in her studio every day.
The act of making is an act of remembering. She makes abstract
paintings which in the physical world have very flat physical surfaces
which at the same time create an intense sense of depth and space. An
invitation is extended to the viewer to fall into the spaces to get a little
lost and to remember.
Sarah Needham has a long term interest in trade and its impact on
people. She has an MSc in Development Studies, has lived and
studied in China and travelled widely. She is interested in the way that
trade impacts on people and place. Trade can be traced through the
dispersal of pigment away from their geographical origins over the
millennia. Visual culture gives us clues to earlier developments than
the written word, seeming to suggest something universal in human
experience and expression. Transforming these pigments into paintings
is a daily task.
Cover image: King Kibold, hand mixed oil on canvas, 150x100cm 2018
Yellow Ochre Light
hand mixed oil on canvas
60x60x4cm 2018
Thames Light II
hand mixed oil over indigo on wood,
with coppered edges
50x50x5cm 2018
Thames Light III
hand mixed oil over indigo on wood,
with coppered edges
50x50x5cm 2018
Deptford Traces
hand mixed oil on canvas
100x150x2cm 2018
ICI
hand mixed oil on canvas
100x100cm 2018
Depth Charge
hand mixed oil on canvas
50x50x4cm 2017
Deptford to Shooters Hill
hand mixed oil on canvas
50x50cm 2018
Mars Red
hand mixed oil on canvas
100x100x4cm 2017
Dark Sea
hand mixed oil on canvas
100x100x4cm 2017
West of Here
hand mixed oil on canvas
100x100cm 2017
Space In Between I
hand mixed oil on canvas
100x100 2017
Space In Between II
hand mixed oil on canvas
50x50x4 cm 2017
Space In Between III
hand mixed oil on canvas
80x80x4cm 2017
Journey
hand mixed oil on canvas
80x80x4cm 2017
The Lost Girl series of paintings
arose from a period of approximately a year
when, for one day a week I looked after my
mother in law who is suffering with dementia.
She from Sri Lanka, me from Britain, the
challenges we faced in trying to make links with
her past, and enjoy the present, and the
underlying grief at the heart of it all.
Lost Girl:Thames
hand mixed oil on canvas
100x100cm 2017
Resistance
hand mixed oil, indigo and sugar
on canvas
100x100x4 cm 2016
Last of the Ten
hand mixed oil and sugar on canvas
100x100x4 2016
The process of hand mixing oil paints with pigment started in 2016,
while making some work for exhibition in St Katharine Docks. I fell in
love with the process and the way in which there is a greater
possibility for controlling lustre, tone and pigment concentration. It
appealed to the side of me that had studied Chinese traditional ink
painting and solved a false dilemma I had been struggling with; whether
I should be using oil or ink. So now I mostly use oil but with all the
benefits and control that I gained from learning to use ink, with the
awareness of tone as concentration of particles of pigment in solution,
and with the added benefits of the sensuousness of oil.
Indigo docks II
hand mixed indigo gouache, on acid free Japanese paper
12x39cm 2017
Coming Up Art Fairs
Roy’s People Art Fair , Barge House Oxo Tower Wharf 12-15 April
Roy People Art Fair , Oxo Tower Wharf 2018
Solo show: No format Gallery, Deptford November 2018 Talented Art Fair,Truman Brewery Brick Lane, 2017
Roy’s People Art Fair, Islington 2017
Selected Recent Exhibitions Art Fair Malaga, Malaga Spain 2017
Trace Elements, 3 person show, Education
downstairs gallery 28 Deptford High St Feb 2018
Tower 42, Lobby, Undergrad Fine Art and Education 2.1 Hatfield Polytechnic
London EC2N exhibiting Fulham Lethe Jan-March 2018 (painting) 1989
SFSA Painting Open, Post grad Development Studies MSc South Bank University
No Format Gallery, December 2017 1994
The Thames:The Artery of London, Post grad Private study Chinese Traditional Ink Painting (Southern
St Katharine Docks, London curated by Angus Pryor 2016 School) Ding Laoshi, Head of Art, Jiangxi Normal University
Sugar and Spice, China 1995-7
St Katharine Docks, curated by Angus Pryor 2016
Juried shows
Creekside Open 17,
APT Gallery Jordan Baseman Selection 2017
Interactive Events
In conversation with Rosalind Davis, Trace Elements 24.2.18
Oral Story Recording : Corby Glenn Project
part of a Community Art Project running 2017-19
Symposium chaired by Angus Pryor for Both Ends of Madness
exhibition 2016
South of the River
oil on canvas
50x50x4cm
2018
www.sarahneedhamartist.co.uk