Sarah Spencer VPNEAC | New English Art Club

Worm Diggers, Whitstable

Oil on Panel

30 x 36 cm
rees and Telegraph Pole in Snow

Pastel

41 x 52 cm
Clouded Seascape

Pastel

49 x 66 cm
Dark Day, Whitstable

Oil

60 x 90 cm
Small Portrait

Oil on Panel

30 x 23 cm

About Sarah Spencer VPNEAC

Artist details wrap

Biography

Artist's Statement

Sarah Spencer paints the places, people and things with which she is most familiar.

The coast where she has lived most of her life is a recurring source. She is drawn to the quality of ‘atmosphere’ in sky and landscape that is both visual and emotional.

The artist aims less at capturing an impression of one moment, and more towards making a work corresponding in some respect to the intimate and intense qualities of well-known territory.

She paints portraits and landscapes by commission, and is intrigued by the experience of responding to places or people which are dear to another but as yet unknown or less-known to her.

Method of Working

Sarah’s landscape works begin with a series of small sketches made outside in oil paint on cardboard. These plein air works are rarely the end goal but the vital source for larger studio works

The process and approach in the studio is very different to that outside: The artist is not battling challenges of changing light and weather or her antipathy to working in public view. The practice of painting indoors is more contemplative. Glazes can be built up over impasto layers over weeks or months. Composition is often changed, and re-arranged.

She is not interested in recapturing a scene so much as playing with the elements gathered until they make a picture that seems compelling.

A work is often composed from elements gathered from different sketches: a sky from one sketch and foreground from another, the picture needing only to correspond to the idea of the landscape in the artist’s head.

Biographical Details

1965 Born in Kent

1984 to 1985 Foundation Course, Canterbury College of Art

1985 to 1989 BA (Hons) Camberwel1 School of Art

1989 to 1991 Post Grad Dip. Royal Academy Schools

Society Memberships

New English Art Club

Scholarships, Awards, Prizes

2013 Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers Prize, New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition

2006 Arts Council England Direct Grant Award

1995 Elizabeth Greenshields Commonwealth Major Award for Painting

1991 Haite Travel Scholarship

1991 Duff Greet Drawing Prize

1991 Creswick Landscape Prize

1989 The Arts Clubs Scholarship

1989 David Murray Landscape Scholarship

Exhibitions

New English Art Club Annual Exhibition 2017

New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition 2016

Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition 2016

New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition 2015

Royal Society of British Artists Annual Exhibition 2015

New English Art Club Annual Open Exhibition 2014

Other exhibitions

2015 The Small Self Portrait Exhibition, Hogarth’s House

2014 Lynn Painter-Stainer Exhibition, Mall Galleries

2006 National Portrait Gallery BP Portrait Exhibition

2006 to 2015 The Russell Gallery solo exhibitions

1992 to 2006 New Grafton Gallery solo exhibitions

Publications

2016 Artist and Illustrators Magazine ‘Glazing’

2015 Artist and Illustrators Magazine: ‘My Studio’ feature by Steve Pill

2012 Country Living Magazine ‘Sarah Spencer: A Sense of Style’ by Corinna Kitchen

2010 Saga Magazine

2008 Art in London

2005 BBC Homes and Antiques

2005 The Daily Telegraph ‘Family’ section, Sarah Lonsdale

2005 The Week

2004 Vogue

1998 House and Garden

1997 Financial Times ‘At the Dealers’ Georgina Adam

1994 Art Review ‘Poetic Vision’ by David Wolfers

1993 The Independent

1992 The Times: ‘Picking out the Plums’ John Russell Taylor review

1992 Robert Harris in ‘Around the Galleries' feature

1992 Exhibitions Diary, Country Life

1991 Daily Mail 1991 ‘Class Portrait’ Madelaine Harper

'500 Portraits’ 2011, National Portrait Gallery Publications ISBN 978 1 85514 448 4

‘Pure Gold’ 2010 FBA Publications ISBN 978 0 9560219 3 9

‘Who’s Who in Art: Biographies of Leading Men and Women in the World of Art Today ’ Editions 1997 -2015 Charles Baile de Lapierriere ISBN 13: 978-0904722413