Biography
Sarah Graham was born in Edinburgh in 1973. Between 1992 and 1996 she completed two MA’s at Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art in History of Art and Fine Art. Graham travelled extensively for many years; Australia, Turkey and the Far East, culminating in a journey on horse-back across Central Asia in 2001. Discovery Channel bought the film “Beyond the Mountains of Heaven” that Graham co-filmed. She also spent many years in the USA working for Antiques Dealer John Hobbs. Graham lives and works in Chelsea, London and has two children with husband James Holland-Hibbert. Natural forms, insects and the plant world provide her main source of inspiration, either borrowed from the Natural History Museum or forming collections from her travels in the studio.
Exhibitions
Masterpiece Art Fair and Lyndsey Ingram, London, June 2022
Galerie Maximillian, Aspen – July – August 2021
Lyndsey Ingram, London – July – September 2020
Galerie Maximillian, Aspen – July – August 2019
Lyndsey Ingram, London – September 2018
Lyndsey Ingram & Galerie Maximillian, New York – November 2016
Galerie Maximillian, Aspen – July 2015
Galerie Maximillian, Aspen – July 2013
Sims Reed Gallery, London – June 2012
Galerie Maximillian, Aspen – July 2011
The Armory Show, New York – March 2011
Sims Reed Gallery, London – June 2010
Sims Reed Gallery, London – October 2008
Personal Statement
“The plant kingdom is a form of constant mystery and means of self-projection for me, a search for the spiritual meaning in Nature. Exploring on foot, I gravitate to strong, architectural forms, often imbued with a sense of metamorphic meaning, anything that Nature throws up or has left along her way.
Focusing in or enlarging these finds permits me to paraphrase them into ‘abstract’ motifs. By distilling these basic forms, I hope to capture the esoteric and elemental force within, so much so that a plant returns to the protean act of creation and it’s essence and design are re-invoked.
Working in pure charcoal or graphite emphasizes this concentration on form and line, whilst more descriptive mediums of colour and paint lure me away from this vision. Executing the drawings within the studio, away from the original source, allows me to bestow it’s parts with an individual figurative detachment and suggestiveness.
This intensive scrutiny, often on a very large scale, of orchids, irises, seed-pods, bones and so on, reveals a universal language of form; both infinite and inspiring.’’