Sarah Butterfield | Oceans, Lights and Beyond

“Shapes of cloud and shadows, wind, weather, colour and light sweep across our horizons and through our minds.” — Sarah Butterfield

“Some of our deepest encounters with the natural world are when we make a journey and are most exposed to the forces of nature.

As well as my classic landscapes and seascapes, I try to reveal beauty in unexpected places as we travel, however mundane the journey. There is beauty in traffic at dusk if you take the information out and stop looking at it as a driver. Car lights move towards and away from each other to create a pattern with no fixed point of reference. The view from a departing ferry shows the water’s surface and reflections from the harbour lights endlessly re-written in the wake of the ship.

These unusual combinations of artificial and natural light- the manmade and natural world interacting - help us see our place in the natural world even when we are walking across a car park.” 

Sarah observes an unusual combination of artificial and natural light. With her scientific grasp of colour relationships, Sarah creates beautiful works of art. These paintings show her reaction to reaching the ocean and the continent’s edge. There is nowhere further to go. We have to build our dreams. Cars point to different worlds. Stars appear in the roadway. Clouds and city lights merge to become images of the cosmos.

Eighty paintings will be on show ranging from small studies to larger works. All are being exhibited for the first time.

“Sarah Butterfield remains one of the most persistently rewarding artists of her generation.” — Channel 4’s Jon Snow

Discover more about Sarah's work