ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores the intertwining of religion, beauty, memory, resilience, expectation, and the evolving experience of womanhood.
In a time when everything is at our electronic fingertips I long to return to the nostalgia of feeling the grooves of the canvas, the shavings of charcoal brushed away leaving a trail of softness, or the pressure of graphite against paper. I often draw from live models, which guides my practice into a traditional approach of the figure. My process is not just for the outcome, it is more for the feeling and meditative state that floods my body when creating.
I am interested in how cultural narratives assign value to women and how those forms can be reimagined as strength and endurance. By working with concepts that carry both delicacy and persistence, my works become a meditation on the contradictions we inhabit - where beauty is fleeting, yet powerful, and where imperfection reveals not failure but resilience.
I always seem to return to themes of reflection and transformation across my art. Subjects range from intimate domestic references, personal memories, and to women shaped by their environment. There is a timelessness that I strive for in each piece. While each of my series emerges from a different geographical place, together they reflect an ongoing interest in how women endure and how personal stories become part of a larger collective experience.
BIO
Sarah Jacobs (1983) is an emerging American artist whose work centers on drawing and mark making as a means of exploring beauty, resilience, memory, and the complexities of being a woman; today and yesterday. Working primarily in graphite, charcoal, and colored pencil, she creates works that balance classical craftsmanship with a touch of modernity. Her intensions are to create a drawing. She specifically strays aways from hyper realism, so the viewer sees the work of a human, the work of a hand, the work of a woman.
Her lifelong fascination with drawing portraiture and the human figure is informed by a deep appreciation for art history and the enduring influence of Old Masters. Jacobs holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History and Criticism and spent nearly two decades working within the professional art world as a gallery director, private art consultant, and broker dealer for artists and collectors in the US and Internationally.
These experiences continue to shape her understanding of how art is seen, collected, and lived with.
Jacobs was born in Arkansas. She currently lives and works in Houston, Texas and Vail, Colorado.