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SARAH VEDDER - Artists - Sullivan Goss Art Gallery

Golden Hills, 2016

12 x 16 inches  |  oil on linen

Sarah Vedder is an American Landscape artist. She attended The Colorado College, where she studied art. She also spent four years studying life drawing with Jorgen Hansen. She was originally an Abstract Expressionist, but embarked on a new body of work after being exposed to American Tonalism. Sarah Vedder is a longstanding member of Santa Barbara's OAK GROUP (the Outdoor Art Klub founded by Ray Strong, Arturo Tello, and Michael Drury.)

Her strong focus on controlling the contrast (or values) in painting, along with the careful build up of glazes softens the scenery in her landscape paintings. The effect is dreamy, evoking a memory of an Arcadian California. 

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AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK

I want to make my work reflective and emotionally resonant. I use a limited palette, in keeping with the contemporary art precept of creating richness of result with economy of means. I am interested in relative value, and in using composition to support the emotional content of the painting. I have been influenced by the tonalist movement in American art, with its emphasis on the essential aspect of a landscape rather than the specific or incidental. My goal is to awaken an emotional response in the viewer. — Sarah Vedder

Sarah Vedder was originally trained as an Abstract Expressionist. The artist notes that painting of that sort requires commitments of time and energy that she couldn't make as a mother of two children. Eventually, her children grew up and she returned to painting. As the environmental movement galvanized in Santa Barbara with Ray Strong's Oak Group of painters, Sarah found an artistic project she could really get behind.

Her paintings still reflect a solid understanding of various formalist concerns that would have been important to early modernist and abstract expressionist artists. At the same time, her palette suggests contemporary tonalism. In each of her works, a reverence for untouched nature sings through softly painted scenes. The soft edges of mountains, clouds, marshes, and clusters of chaparral evoke the memory of a time when the land was still virgin.

 

EDUCATION

Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO

 

AWARDS & AFFILIATIONS

1997-2001 California Art Club Gold Medal Show, Pasadena, CA
1997-2002 Artist Member, Oak Group, Santa Barbara, CA
2002 Honorable Mention, Santa Barbara County Art Fund, Santa Barbara, CA

 

EXHIBITIONS

2005  "Anima Mundi", Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2003, 2002  Sullivan Goss, Ltd., Montecito, CA
2002  Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, CA
1998-2002  Marin Agricultural Land Trust, Marin, CA
2000, 1998, 1993  Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Santa Barbara, CA
1998  Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, CA
1997, 1996  California Heritage Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1996, 1995, 1994, 1992, 1990-87  Faulkner Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
1999, 1997  Nature Conservancy, Santa Cruz Island, CA
1996  Ellen Easton Gallery, Montecito, CA
1993  The Columbia Club Foundation, Indianapolis, IN
1992  C.I. Clark Galleries, Bakersfield, CA
1992-87  Arlington Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA
1977, 1975  Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, CA

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