Updated artist statement. Feb 2025
Artist Statement 2025
Hi, my name's Sarah Braden, I decided early on to devote my life to my art in any measure possible. I've had successes and errors. The inspiration goes up and down like everything else. When I begin an art piece I want to create a purely abstract form where no subject can be found. Tangled line work laced through fluid drip paintings, bleeding ink, reacting with different mediums, and experimenting with different materials to find and create new effects. The abstract part of the process is a time of letting go, focusing on color density, surface tension, measuring diluted liquids, and gently guiding pulls and drips with paint brushes and other tools. Creating the abstract parts of my art is meditative and relaxing for the anxious parts of me. If you're going to dedicate your life to something, of course there will be difficulties in struggles, but you have to glean some enjoyment from your toils. It's fun to be a little more messy, before the work finds its place in direction before the subject comes into focus. When I begin, I know this will become the background in some form but I focus on the process during this first part rather than what it will become in the end.
Now I will tell you about my personal history & sobriety for context. The first time that I tried sobriety I'd been drinking for 15 years and I was 32. I had my art degree and a long string of random jobs. It was 2016, I was sober for a year. By the end of that year I was painting abstract art, I had finally found purpose again. It was selling for a substantial amount of money to me, and I felt very inspired. In 2017 I started drinking again, 7 years later passed like a week, in 2024 I was ready to get sober again because I felt like I had lost control of my life. Even during the drinking period I sold my abstract paintings in over 30 states, & 3 countries. People thought I was doing ok, but my mental was a mess. Today, almost all of the unsold artwork that I created in that period before my sobriety in 2024 has been updated, reframed, repainted, or otherwise finished. I began to see all of my previous abstract work as unfinished, not necessarily bad, but unfinished
I felt a calling (a challenge) to connect everything as one cohesive collection, in a fictional narrative story. For the first time I wanted to see a protagonist, and mythical relics, creatures, and people with detailed and complicated lives. The themes of my art before involved magical and occult subjects, as well as nature and spiritual themes. There were lots of watercolor studies of tarot cards and Astrology symbolism that were sold for cheap during music festivals… nothing really connected all of the work together.
One of my goals in redoing this collection of old relics has been to find a new focus without outside influence. I bought some of the art books that I remember from when I was very young, books of fairies & goblins (see Rackham, Fairy tale illustrations & Brian Froud Good Faeries). Please let me bring back some of that raw distilled energy from before college, from before I started doing abstract drip work, and being heavily influenced by other artists and peers. I wanted to remember the reasons why I fell in love with art as a child. The result of doing this deeper reflection of my child self and my former self is that my ideas have returned. The new writings & connected projects of these illustrated novels, stories, myths, and legends are coming to be quickly. I don't like any of the media that I am being presented. I wanted to create a new place for the viewer to go, maybe inside their minds, to immerse themselves in a world where evil doesn't prevail. A break from the screens.