Sarah Wesson Painting Ripton VT

Sarah Wesson lives in Ripton, Vermont and has a studio in Middlebury. After a decade in Greenwich Village, she moved to Vermont. In New York she attended a number of professional art schools including the Art Students League. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows, and has been purchased for a number of private collections here and abroad. “I offer these images as a celebration of the natural beauty that surrounds us here in Vermont and other places I have stopped along the way to paint.” I grew up by the sea and am drawn to long and unobstructed views. I see abstract qualities in vast stretches of land and sky. The wide open fields here in Panton remind me of the sea. Slight undulations are waves on a calm day; the facing mountains are waves not quite broken. Marine fossils near Lake Champlain remind me that I am standing on an ancient ocean floor. The landscape speaks quietly to me as I work. A shaft of light will point out something my eye did not catch initially. A rain shower will tell me it is time to stop. A figure will move into the landscape and out again, leaving a new composition to consider. The outdoors heightens my senses. I see colors change as the wind pushes bushes and trees from side to side. I feel heat as a warming sun wrings moisture from the earth, and I hear the grasses rub against themselves. While painting at the edge of Lake Champlain with the Adirondacks as a background, my eye moves from lake to mountains and back again as the sun, wind and clouds simultaneously send flashes of color across distant peaks and nearby water. It is at the juncture of stable land and not so stable water that I am reminded of all that changes and all that is seemingly stationary. These timeless partners call to both parts of my soul—a place for movement and a place for stillness. Each painting is a prayer. I dialogue with the subject in front of me while the divine symphony of wind, sun and changing light plays on. Simply, because the sun rises and falls again, I am compelled to paint. Sarah is currently a Featured Artist at Art on Main.