Perhaps a childhood spent in Fiji may have sown the seeds of wanderlust in Sarah Elder’s mind because after seven years of the freneticism of the broking world, over fifteen years ago, Sarah decided to swap the global markets of the City’s virtual world for the primitive heat and dust of Asia and Africa.
She washed away the culture of “buy and sell” in a journey that would take her throughout many foreign lands. Every journey inspires the evocative oils and watercolours with which Sarah famously communicates her unique views of far flung, and in many cases, the less travelled routes around the globe, most recently to the remote regions of Kashmir and Ladakh and the dusty plains and green hills of Africa.
Working on unorthodox materials collected on her travels, papyrus, elephant dung paper, rice paper and handmade Indian papers, she has a remarkable talent for observation and a singular ability to render the colour, movement and atmosphere of the scene before her.
Joseph Conrad famously described a journey through Africa as a voyage to “the heart of darkness”, Sarah Elder took a similar pilgrimage but came back instead with visions of light and heat and vivid colour. Hers is a style which communicates the very spirit of the country she paints, capturing not only the heat and the dust, but also the energy and culture.
She recently won The BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year 2009 Visions of Nature Award. Sky TV also recently did a feature on her sporting pictures.
She has shown in solo and joint exhibitions regularly over the past twenty years, her much sought after paintings hanging in public and private collections throughout the world. She has also illustrated several books on Africa.
“Having grown up in Fiji and then the Kent countryside I have drawn inspiration from the landscapes, animals, and people I have encountered, both in the UK and on my journeys abroad. I have travelled and painted extensively throughout the world, soaking up and embracing the atmosphere, colours and culture of these (sometimes distant) lands. To be sketching and painting in the remote regions of Himalayas, the African bush, a village in Rajasthan, a Moroccan souk or on a Tuscan hillside, (to name but a few places) is my idea of heaven. I want to communicate the atmosphere, movement and the spirit of the scene before me; be it a or a vignette of everyday life, a cheetah dashing past, warthogs disappearing into the distance, or field of lavender. I work on many different materials, many collected on my travels and use oils, watercolours, local earths, pigments, and charcoal collected from the fires.
With animals, the thrill of the speed has inspired me to capture and concentrate on the movement of the animal in action, be it the thundering of hooves, the power, strength and agility of a dog or cheetah, or the dash of a hare or warthog”.
