Meet Sarah Detweiler

We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Detweiler recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I have found that resilience is something that grows exponentially. This explains why those who have been tested the most by life, often seem to be the most resilient. The fact is that I had no idea how resilient I was until I was met with one of my life’s greatest tests at the age of 24. Up until then, my life presented with few challenges. I was an overachiever, had always excelled at school, made friends easily, and even got a job in New York a week before I had planned to move there after college.

But all of the success and achievements in the world are no match for addiction. It only took the first few years of my early 20’s to reach the bottom of my alcoholism. Fortunately, my overachieving tendencies carried over to my recovery because once I went to my first AA meeting, I was all in. I am one of the fortunate ones who never turned back. I did the work and there were certainly struggles along the way, but at 20 years sober I view my sobriety as a gift that introduced me to my resilience.

I thought that my sobriety was the resolve to the challenges that had infected my life for those few years, but soon I would learn that the hardships still come. In my first 10 years of sobriety, I would get fired from my job in advertising, have a failing t-shirt business, and get a very expensive masters in art therapy but get burned out of the field in only a year and a half. Personally, I would find myself in toxic and abusive relationships and feel blind-sided by the fact I no longer had the drinking to blame it on.

But I had developed another skill over these years that carried me over hurdle after hurdle. I had learned to give myself grace. I now trusted that the failures in life have just as much value than the achievements. And each time I made it through another struggle, my resilience made a deposit into my bank of self worth. The more resilient I had become, the more I seemed to value myself, something that had never come easily to me.

The reward of giving myself grace and valuing myself was meeting my amazing husband who was a true partner in creating a dream life. But always in the back of my mind, I wondered what my great tragedy would be. I assumed everyone would have one. I even wondered if there was something so terrible that could happen to me that it would lead me back to drinking.

My husband and I both desperately wanted children and within the first year of our marriage, I was pregnant. But I had a miscarriage and with the loss of that pregnancy, I felt like I lost a sense of purpose. I remember thinking, “Ok, so this must be it. This is my life tragedy.” But I survived and my resilience grew. I went on to have my daughter a year later and life flourished. When we decided to expand our family, I didn’t struggle to get pregnant, but I lost that one as well. 2 more miscarriages after that one led me to a fertility specialist. Years of my life were consumed by the grief, but still I survived. After a total of 7 miscarriages, my heavy heart could not carry the grief any longer and my husband and I decided that we would accept the blessing of one, amazing daughter.

I immersed myself in my ever-growing fine art career that had serendipitously found success while being a stay-at-home mother with my daughter. And then the pandemic hit and the whole world got the chance to see how resilient we can be. At the age of 40, I found myself pregnant with my son, my miracle baby! During this pregnancy, I made the work for what would be my second, sold out solo exhibition with my gallery in Philadelphia. 3 weeks before my due date and just before the closing of that show titled, “mOTHER”, I had to be induced because I had preeclampsia. That experience had its own share of trauma with fear of the safety of my baby coupled with a positive Covid test on intake, but that is a story for another day. My healthy baby boy was born on the same day that my solo exhibition closed, and once again my resilience grew.

It is important to note that throughout the experiences that caused me to dive deeply into my survival mode, my art was always there as my most valuable coping skill. Art has been the constant in my life. It has been my checkpoint, my mirror, and my portrait of grace. I believe that the reason I have found the most success in my art during the years of my greatest struggles is that within each piece, my resilience shows. And who doesn’t love a good survivor story?

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

After many different art careers, I am finally at the point where I am able to focus on my fine art career and identify the kind of artist I want to be. The reason I have been able to develop my fine art practice to the level of success that I have had is because I carry the tangent role as stay-at-home-mother to my children. My studio is in my home and I am able to undulate between my duties as a mother and artist. Most of my studio practice occurs in the evenings after the children are in bed. Because my time is divided, I have found myself in a cycle of making the work for solo exhibitions every couple of years with my gallery in Philadelphia, Paradigm. It has been wonderful to form a relationship with them that I am able to do this until I have more time to exhibit more frequently and more globally. I try to keep my presence as an artist active and lucrative by releasing limited editions of prints and small collections, and submitting to magazines and virtual exhibitions.

I would describe my work as figurative and narrative oil paintings that often include mixed media. My mixed media usually takes for with a fibre art technique including embroidery and punch needle embroidery. It is important to me to challenge the traditional expectations of painting. My narratives are often self-portraits as they touch on the personal experiences that are the most prevalent in my life at the time. I use my work to process my experience and reveal the narrative to myself as I invite others in. With a 9 year old daughter and 3 year old son, most of my work in the past 10 years has centered around fertility and motherhood. My “Hidden Mother” series, where I explore the hidden identities of mothers and their past selves once they enter motherhood, seemed to resonate with many.

The series I am currently working on, processes my recent ADHD diagnosis as a middle aged woman and how being able to identify as a neurodivergent has altered my self perception. I will be exhibiting this work in
my next solo exhibition with Paradigm, opening on April, 4, 2025.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1. Figure out what kind of artist you want to be and make your actions align with those goals.

I like being a gallery artist because I like being able to develop the idea for a show as a whole and work with the gallery so that they take on the roles that give me more studio time. I would rather have the gallery take 50% commission than do what is required for me to receive the entire amount of a sale.

If you want to make a go at a fine art career, but need to have a job to subsidize this goal, consider a job that is not actually in the creative field so your “creative juices” are not depleted by the time you come home and are able to work in the studio.

2. I have made a lot of helpful and meaningful connections for my art just by putting myself out there. Don’t make assumptions that other people are too successful or busy to talk to you.

3. I have not let any lack of formal training hold me back. If anything, it has allowed me to explore materials and take risks because I don’t have a rigid set of rules.

Who has been most helpful in helping you overcome challenges or build and develop the essential skills, qualities or knowledge you needed to be successful?

I think you might find that behind most successful women, there is a group of other successful women offering support, advice, and confidence. I have been fortunate to have found two groups of these women in the past 10 years.

One of these groups was born out of an all women’s art fair that I was selected to participate in by The Jealous Curator, Danielle Krysa. Some of the artists participating wanted to stay in regular communication and one of the artists invited us to join an online art night where we would meet on Zoom from our studios once a week and discuss life and art while working. The group was made of of female artists from different countries and time zones. These women saw me through the pandemic, miscarriages, a pregnancy, and artistic achievements.

The other group is one that formed in more recent years since we have been able to be out in the world again post pandemic. It is comprised also of all female artists who are local to the Philadelphia area. This group grew from the original connections I made through my gallery, Paradigm. Because we are local to each other, we are able to support each other by attending openings, making studio visits, or just enjoy time spent with like-minded artists. It is because of this group that I finally transitioned to using traditional oil paint from the water-mixable oils I had been using for years.

What I find is a common thread throughout these groups is that there are no egos or competition. It is purely about lifting each other up, and offering the knowledge or advice that we can give along with love and support. And that is a beautiful thing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sarahdetweiler.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sd_artifacts
• Other: Gallery:

  https://www.paradigmarts.org/collections/sarah-detweiler