We were lucky to catch up with Sarah Adams recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sarah, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
My resilience comes from very dark places personally. I have been through quite a lot in my life. Though traumatic, these experiences influence my art and art style heavily. Art is what gives me an outlet and keeps me going.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’ve been drawing since I was very little and a lot of my drive to keep going was from my Nana, she was an artist as well and was a huge reason I decided to pursue it seriously. I tend to focus on mental health topics and social/ world issues because these things are very important to me. What I feel is special about my work is how much my personality shines through via the textures and colors I use. I feel like now-a-days people prefer flat, graphic works. I embrace texture and distress in both my technique and the subject matter.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
In my artistic journey, it was important for me to express my feelings in the form of images and be able to share with others what I was going through without explaining it in words. Condensing my brain into one piece of paper was something I always thought was a super power. For people early in their journey I just would like to tell them to slow down and take their time. As creatives we want to be successful fast! We end up losing why we began creating in the first place. Never lose the drive to do art for yourself. Do not start a piece only with the intention of finishing it quickly. That is how you know your passion is dwindling, when you just want to get it over with.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
I think playing to your strengths and leaning into them is extremely beneficial. So is exploring your weaknesses and working out those muscles the best you can. However, as I’ve mentioned previously, my personal style is bit more textured and robust than the mainstream works you see today. I sometimes get insecure and feel I should tone it down. But I love my style and I don’t want to change my techniques for my work to be more digestible to others, because that doesn’t serve me as a creative as much as it would if it were for a job. Lean into what you already do easily and what you LOVE! I’ve recently found a live for mixed media work, I’m so much more invested in a piece when I can get my hands on physical materials and create interesting textures and colors.
Do what you do well and what makes you happy. Work on your weaknesses, but don’t discard the natural zest your work already has for the sake of others’ palettes.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @xsarahdoesartx
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-adams-770b751a1?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
