Lizard on Branches

Her rural experiences inform her artistic vision. Sarah Rakes has synthesized these rural experiences into powerful images that speak a primal language. Sarah was born in a small Arkansas town in the Ozarks. She now lives on a farm in an isolated wooded area near Tallulah Falls, Georgia. Sarah's first exposure to art came at the age of nine, when an artmobile--funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in order to bring art to underprivileged areas--made a visit to her school. Sarah knew from that moment that she would become an artist. And she began to paint almost immediately. Sarah's childhood was difficult. Her homelife was filled with strife, discord and stress. Her cultural and social opportunities were limited. School work was tough. In painting, Sarah found an escape from the difficult and limiting circumstances of her life. In her exploration of the possibilities of color, she found freedom, joy, choice. Much as the quilts of Amish women reflect an unconscious expression of their need for individual achievement, for differentiation, the paintings of Sarah reflect the liberation of her spirit. The rural realism of her paintings. Combined with her Fauve palette, expose the romantic vision of nature's wholesomeness. Through her paintings, Sarah makes the rural reality of her cluttered world appear exotic and eccentric. Sarah's paintings are seductively intelligent. They reflect a keen awareness of a time and place that are very much her own.