‘I like to feel I’m on the edge, looking out at the light and dynamism of the sea. When I paint, I’m not attempting to create an accurate representation of the coast; instead, I’ve tried to capture the spirit of the place.’ – Sarah Knox
With reference to the artistic era of Romanticism, this extensive collection of sixty ‘sublime paintings’ and fine art original prints aims to evoke the poetic wonder of nature. The underlying theme is a response to climate change, to pause and observe a sense of stillness, light and hope in the wild, open landscape.
A cool, crisp composition, Light within, moonlit Jura pictures the Hebridean island through the simplicity of shimmering shape and shadow. A fluid blended wash of indigo, celeste and silver saturates the canvas, punctuated by the burst of white light reflected on the calm water. A dark veil of misty clouds hovers over the imperceptible horizon line to reinforce the dreamlike ambiguity of the setting.
Within a calligraphic style of spontaneous brushstrokes, careful modulation delineates natural forms – the splash of waves and rounded curve of the Paps. Texture and gestural mark-making play a vital role, juxtaposing opacity and translucency across the dark island and glistening sea at night. This fleeting glimpse of moonlight in the inky black sky is a symbol of time passing, day to night.
Formed around 60 million years ago, the geological basalt lava columns of Staffa have inspired two dark, dramatic seascapes. Hymn to Staffa focuses on the jagged vertical lines of the sheer cliff edge dropping into the dark ocean, diffused in a blue-tinted mist and glow of pale sunlight. The lacy layering of aqua-lime hues delicately depicts the glossy, glassy surface of the sea, engraved with stippled streaks spreading towards the rocky shoreline.
During a tour of Scotland in August 1829, Felix Mendelssohn took a boat trip to Staffa, where the rhythmic crash of waves echoing around Fingal’s Cave was imaginatively translated into The Hebrides overture for his Symphony No. 3 in A Minor. Likewise, Knox captures the melancholic mood of this legendary island, lost on the edge of the Atlantic, in a silent, painterly symphony of tone and tempo, light and shadow.
Immersing the viewer in the gale-force wind and rain around Staffa, Requiem is more of an impressionistic vision of the craggy cliffs, blurring the perspective between sky and sea. With a wild whirl of oils, the hazy blending of luminous colours – teal, tiffany, cyan, sage – recalls Turner’s dissolving horizons, where nature verges on abstraction. While Turner portrayed the roaring power of the sea, Knox distils it with quiet contemplation and an idea of timelessness, both ancient and immediate.
While also a distinguished watercolourist, (selected to exhibit at Fabriano in Acquarello, Italy), Sarah has developed an innovative technique, adding an ecologically-friendly solvent to oil paint to masquerade the consistency of watercolour. As well as painting on primed canvases she has also experimented with natural linen. The tonal quality of paint, media and materiality are all integral to her own expressive signature and aesthetic language.
A series of paintings is based on a trip in May this year to Kalami, Corfu, where the novelist, poet and travel writer Lawrence Durrell and family lived in the 1930s and early 40s. He was enchanted by the unspoilt tranquillity of this northeast corner of the Greek island: ‘The little bay lies in a trance, drugged with its own extraordinary perfection – a conspiracy of light, air, blue sea and cypresses.‘ – Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell
On this painting holiday, Sarah walked from one secluded cove to another with her sketchbooks, watercolours, ink and pencils, finding it ‘so mindful to absorb a place en plein air, and to arrest that moment.’ Then back home in the studio she would transform ‘…those sketches into oil paintings, the work becoming looser and more imaginative’.
Ionian sea literally dazzles the eye with pure Mediterranean light over the translucent water, with a flowing flood of blues, from cobalt to turquoise, saturating the smooth linen surface. With a piercing glare, the summer sun filters through layers of paint giving an illusive depth to the sea; flat calm with hardly a ripple, this contrasts with the gentle contour of the hills beyond. Knox is fascinated by the liminal sense of space, time and place, the boundary between reality and memory; here the clarity of the scene is held like a snapshot for a moment of reflection.
For photographers, filmmakers and painters, the natural phenomenon of ‘the blue hour’ before sunset, bathing the sky in a surreal glow of light, is magical. Island wrapped like silk certainly gives the impression of twilight, as day shifts to evening, where, on the horizon, a shadowy smudge of an island is cloaked in hazy heat. The edges blur between the silvery-blue sky and sea with a gauze-like effect, a view both observed and half-remembered. Knox’s brushwork is restrained with a shiny glaze of colour like the sheen of silk – true to the painting’s title. This serene Greek seascape – perhaps during ‘the blue hour’ – creates a visual metaphor of ethereal stillness.
‘The sea’s curious workmanship: bottle green glass sucked smooth and porous by the waves.’ – Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell.
By chance, on a stroll along Kalami beach, she met her friend Karen Adams, the Norfolk artist, painting the Durrells’ former home, White House, (preserved today as a boutique hotel), as the sun set.
Sarah is also a Fine Art Printmaker, who was awarded VACMA (Visual Art and Craft Maker Award) bursaries in 2023 -24 and 2024-5 to attend advanced courses at Edinburgh Printmakers.
Shore of longing is a collagraph illustrating the rugged coastline of Arran, carefully crafted with scratched, etched and carved lines, gradually layered onto the plate. The process of printmaking frees her work, Sarah describes, while chance effects created by collage can bring new light and depth. This gives a tangible, tactile quality to the cliffs and rocks, while the almost monochrome palette conveys the cold, moonlit night as well as a feeling of solitude and remembrance.
Sarah visits the East Neuk of Fife every season, attending the Pittenweem Arts Festival in August, which is renowned as a beacon of art and creativity all around this fishing village. Four miles away, the scene in Frayed shore, St Monans looks west as the Autumn light casts shadows over the East Neuk. This is a most absorbing seascape with vibrant, vivacious colours splattered across the canvas with an energetic flourish. The horizon line is placed high, which emphasises the foreground, awash with frothing white waves lapping the shore.
This stylised composition feels both expansive and intimate, suspended between movement and stillness. The surface is richly worked allowing colours to bleed into one another, which mirrors the merging of cloudy sky and translucent sea with an interplay of light. Superb textural detail here – patches of thick impasto giving way to fluid washes revealing the rough weave of the canvas. The application of paint in this manner suggests physical weathering and erosion, to highlight the frayed fragility of the coastline, buffeted by wind and salty spray.
Sarah Knox is less concerned about topography and more about an immersive engagement with landscape as an emotional experience, blurring the boundaries between realism and abstraction. Romantically sublime in spirit, these lyrical, luminous seascapes evoke a tangible sense of solace and calm amidst the shifting change in our natural environment through time and tide.
Thursday to Saturday, 10.30am- 6pm. Sunday, 10.30am – 4pm
Entry to the exhibition is free, and Sarah is hosting a private view / press event on 1st Oct, 4-8pm.
With thanks to Vivien Devlin for this review.
