Sarah Bentley

I was born in 1987, and have been painting ever since I could hold a brush.  I was raised predominantly in Northern Virginia, however as my family was with the State Department I spent some of my formative years in Saudi Arabia and Tanzania.  I began to think seriously about becoming an artist while in high school, and decided to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art, where I graduated Cum Laude with a BFA in illustration.  However, I graduated in the spring of 2009, when our country was experiencing a severe economic crisis.  With so many experienced illustrators out of work, I realized that my drawing abilities were not up to par.  So I went to attend the Angel Academy of Art from 2011-2014, and fell in love with the traditional, more academic style of painting.  I finally learned the techniques necessary to explore my ideas, and, sometimes, just to paint something pretty.  Now I'm back out in the world, and striving to make a living off of doing what I love. 

I paint in a style that recalls a time when artists were trained academically to paint.  My work represents a return to the academic styles, to naturalistic views, to when the everyday layman could look at a painting and find meaning in it, even if that meaning is as simple as "This is pretty and would look good over my couch.” Of course, I strive to imbue my work with deeper themes, beginning with reflections of our modern society represented in an old-fashioned manner, ranging from grief and loss to the pleasures of a fresh harvest or the smaller indulgences of life that a fast paced society so often takes for granted. I look at our modern world, and I look for the quiet spaces that still exist, and do my best to represent that on canvas, from my landscapes to my still lives. I strive to capture a sense that, while our world keeps progressing, there is always a moment for reflection.