Sarah Goswell is an artist, designer and creator based in the UK.
My art distinguishes itself through a striking use of colour and lighting to create images that almost leap off the canvas. My signature works seize the viewer's attention with their vibrant aesthetics that captivate the incredible depth of character of my animal subjects.
My artistic background goes back over 25 years with experience in various media. Trained as a silversmith and a qualified photographer; I have also produced fine art graphite portraits, designed gardens, illustrated books - while running my own jewellery business renowned for its unique handcrafted dichroic glass.
I am a strong believer in art’s therapeutic nature and use my work to promote mental health and wellbeing as well as to support conservationism.
Very special thanks go to Charlie Goswell in doing such a fantastic and thorough job in creating this website for me. His talents and kindness never fail to impress me.
How I paint…
I have often been asked to create videos of my painting process and in particular my application of paint to canvas, something I will get around to; for now here are a couple of close-up photographs that show more detail.
A close-up section of G’Day the Koala’s face
In this particular close-up you can see the rough reflected figure of a fireman as well as an impression of flames behind him. The paint application does vary depending on the type of surface I want to give an idea of. So for the shorter fur over the main part of the nose the paint is applied more thickly in shorter dabs, sometimes applying multiple colours at once. What I don’t want is the colours polluting each other and becoming muddied. The tip of the nose is more smooth and velvety. Around the eye and cheeks the strokes vary according to how the fur is in those areas, varying in length and direction. I let areas dry, then return to add highlights and sometimes more colour although care is needed as with acrylic paint colours laid one on top of the other they can darken quite dramatically when dried.
A Close-up of Mrembo the Baby Elephant
I wanted to paint Mrembo to give a feeling of joyous movement. (In the full painting you will see he is joyfully running towards you with ears flapping.) Given that I wanted to give that feel of movement the painting style needed to be more loose and softly blurred. The challenge was to give the impression of the very wrinkly skin especially along the trunk without painting in every wrinkle. I also wanted the paint to be quite vibrant without being cartoon like. What I work towards trying to achieve with my painting and use of colour is that from a distance the animal appears quite lifelike and almost three dimensional, however as you get closer the brighter colours become more obvious.
A Close up of Honu the Turtle
Honu posed a real challenge for paint application, for a start there was no fur! Joking aside trying to emulate the smoothed and crusty surfaces yet incorporate the colours I wanted to be there was really difficult. I didn’t know if the colours would be too bright, but I wanted to give the impression of that beautiful prismatic effect when you are swimming underwater and sunlight hits fish and all manner of sea life, when it happens the colours almost become sparkling and gem like. Turtles are our ‘ancients’ of the sea, whilst wrinkly and reptilian in appearance they are so very beautiful!