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SARA GENN
When I was six my parents took my big brothers and I to Europe to tour the great museums. My mother outfitted us in woolen dress coats – it rained for three weeks. They gave us cameras and notebooks
and told us to record what we thought was interesting. We recorded our fascination with Brussels’ Manikin Pis, and my handwriting shows the first signs of multitasking. My elementary school teachers would report to my mother that others were writing in
my journal…or inquire about my multiple personalities because my handwriting changed and was untraceable. While in London the National Gallery chose one of my drawings for their children’s collection, and so my career as an artist began.
My
father is also an artist. He propagates joy and curiosity. My mother is a practical problem-solver. She infused in us a serious reverence for Bach and the Beatles. I had four hours of piano lessons every other Saturday. My father built a studio eight
paces from the house. That’s where I found cut-ends of Arches paper and a thousand felt-tip markers. I created a publishing house with his five-foot paper cutter, Xerox, stapler, typewriter, Scotch tape and glue. My brothers and I formed a family band
and played Beatles and Santana covers. We made puppet theatres and puppets and wrote scripts and built pińatas and all of the prizes. We nailed a hundred drawings to a giant tree and sold them for 5 cents to everyone who lived on our street. We published
cartoon strips and greeting cards and novel attempts.
I went to York House School in Vancouver where my art teachers gave me the art room and its supply cupboard. I was awarded the Spirit Cup twice, and the Art Prize, the Provincial Art
Scholarship and the highest score in the American Advanced Placement Art Program. This all gave me the idea that I had discovered something I really enjoyed and found challenging. Mostly I felt lucky to have something I could call my own – my own journey
with no foreseeable ending. I completed a mostly uninspiring Fine Arts Degree at Queen’s University and paid for it by selling my paintings in Vancouver without my professors knowing. I had my first solo show in the summer of my second year in my
hometown of White Rock, British Columbia. Jenkins Showler Gallery sold 72 paintings in two days – and I grew a little into myself, and believed that it was possible to live a life serving the miracle of creation.
Upon my graduation I stationed
myself in an uninsulated studio on the banks of the Nicomeckle River in Crescent Beach. There was no running water but a wood burning stove. Including my time going back and forth from Queen’s, I worked in the Nicomeckle studio for six years. It was the
period in my life when I created what was most important to me – my core beliefs, and my most irrational dreams. I started exploring personal themes and an attempt to capture the purity and essence of my experiences. In 1998 my sweetheart Richard and I
moved to France and ended up in southern Spain, living in Seville’s former Music Conservatory. We published a yearlong diary and illustrated it with drawings and photographs. These days my subject matter is abstracted from something more fundamental – of
feelings rather than representation. I’m journaling onto canvas, always.
“Everything we see disperses and vanishes. Nothing remains of Nature. Our art has to inspire a feeling of permanence while still showing the elements of all its changes.
It has to make us sense the eternal."
- Paul Cezanne
What is my goal? What is my contribution? I’d like to spend the rest of my life caring for my destiny – serving a language that allows me for moments to capture that sense of the
eternal, to experience handmade beauty, to wear my heart on my sleeve and to glimpse the power of others who harness their truest love. In return I will make my mark incessantly, commit to becoming, and contribute to the ways of the world – to make it
better.
Sara Genn, January 2002
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Pause
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Acrylic
16" x 20"
$840 CDN Unframed
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Breathe
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Acrylic
11" x 14"
$480 CDN Unframed
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Crush
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Acrylic
48" x 48"
$3600 CDN Unframed
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Squall
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Acrylic
48" x 48"
$3600 CDN Unframed
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Blush
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Acrylic
48" x 48"
$3600 CDN Unframed
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For more information on this artist, email us
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EDUCATION
York House School, Vancouver
Queen's University, Kingston, ON
EXHIBITIONS-SOLO
Jenkins Showler Gallery, 1993/96
Humberston Edwards Fine Art, 1996
Canada House, 1996
Hambleton Galleries, 1993/97
Assinaboia Gallery, 1997
COVERAGE-MEDIA
Peace Arch News, White Rock, BC, 1993
Boardwalk Magazine, White Rock, BC, 1993
'Treasured Moments' (book)
Canadian Living Television, 1997
CORPORATE AND PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
United Way, Crown Life,
MEDIUM
Acrylic, Oil & Pastel
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