Featured Cover Artist: Sarah Week
Sarah was born and raised in Kailua-Kona and lived in San Francisco for about five years while attending the Academy of Art University, where she graduated with a BFA in animation. She recently moved back to Kailua-Kona.
Although she has only worked professionally as an artist for two years, she’s always wanted to be an artist.
“I am extremely lucky to have a very supportive family who have always encouraged me to pursue art as a career,” she says.
Specifically, it was Sarah’s grandma who was a painter and always encouraged her to pursue her art.
Today, her work is a visual description of moments in nature captured in her sketchbook and then later revisited to fine-tune.
“For me, a lot of my art is a way of expressing the beauty that I see in the world. I’m always admiring nature and interacting with it, so I’m going on hikes, or going to the beach, or going for a swim, or stargazing so I can kind of access experiences I’ve had and exaggerate that so other people see what specific things that I think are beautiful,” she says.
The studio where she details her work is a modest space with two desks pushed together, one for traditional painting and the other for digital painting. Often she’s accompanied by two cats, one white and fluffy and a bit standoffish, and the other a yellow tabby with a vibrant personality. Both, however, are extremely nosy studio-mates.
And when she’s not creating? She’s drinking coffee. It’s the lilting laugh and the smile that’s constantly in her voice that makes you think it would be excellent to sit and have coffee with her.
When she is creating, Sarah’s visual process depends on the piece, but usually begins with a quick sketch and a rough watercolor or pastel study. If it’s a digital piece, she scans and paints over it in Adobe Photoshop. If it’s a painting, she moves on from the rough painting to adding details.
It’s hard to believe that some of Sarah’s paintings are just that. They seem more like dreamy memories of reality. And although her work already has a polished edge to it, she knows she has a lot of growing to do.
Early on, she was inspired by local artists. “I was very inspired by Herb Kāne’s iconic paintings of Hawaiian history and mythology. I also really admire Penny Gupton and Kathy Long. Recently, I’ve been interested in studying the work of Tyrus Wong, Mary Blair, and Eyvind Earle,” she says.
For Sarah, her art will always be the thing that gives her a voice.
“It’s really important for me as a way of expressing things to people because I do have a hard time expressing myself with words. I think it’s more of a genuine expression. There is no language barrier . People can still get it if they look at my paintings hopefully, and that’s the goal,” she says. ❖
Contact Sarah Week: 808.990.4407, SarahWeek.com, thesarahweek@gmail.com
