When reality merges with imagination, magic can happen.
This is certainly true for artist Sara Paxton, whose paintings spectacularly blur the line between the two.
Her trademark landscapes, seascapes and still life works may have their germination in the real world, but it is through the creative conduit of Sara’s imagination that they are able to fully burst into life.
The result is what Sara describes as “between real and impressionistic” – contemporary impressionist works in oil, some of which will feature in her upcoming Sunshine Coast exhibition at Art Nuvo Gallery, Buderim.
“It’s real enough to know what it is, but it’s not real in that that’s how the landscape is and that’s how I’ve painted it,” Sara tells salt.
“It’s sort of halfway in between, so it leaves a bit to the imagination of the person that’s looking at it.”
While the landscapes Sara loves painting will comprise the majority of the upcoming exhibition, titled Light Energy, there are sure to be a few surprises as well, as she never knows exactly what is going to happen when she approaches the canvas.
The one thing that is certain, however, is that all her paintings will exude light and colour, the star elements of her work and two of Sara’s favourite subjects. “My paintings are full of light – that is one of the things I just love – the light and the colour.
“A lot of my paintings are quite bright and light-filled, and that’s really where the name [for the exhibition] came from; and there’s a lot of movement in them, which hopefully a lot of the brushstrokes capture – that energy that goes into a painting,” she says.
Originally from England and based in Victoria, Sara’s links to the sunshine state were forged through her Queensland-born husband and have been strengthened through regular exhibitions on the Coast, where her work is always in high demand.
Much of her inspiration comes from the photographs that she captures wherever she goes and may use as the basis for a new work, although the end result is often entirely different to what is captured by her lens.
“They’re just photographs of trees and photographs of the river and fields; it’s nothing all that specific, but it will eventually turn into a painting,” she says.
“I use [the photo] as a starting point, but of course, some of it doesn’t actually look like that in the end. The colours are never the same. The structure is never the same.
“And I like to create perhaps something that’s a little bit unexpected, so I might look at it and think, ‘I’m going to add some pink in there; there’s no pink in the landscape, but I add my own bits and pieces. That’s what makes it mine, I guess.’”
Another feature of her work is that Sara uses oils exclusively, but the result is not what you might expect, with a layering technique used that imbues the paintings with a dreamy quality she describes as “quite washy”.
“Some of them are built up in washes – I’ll put on a wash of oil paint and let it dry, then I’ll go back and put on another wash, a different colour on top of that,” she says.
“You create layers of landscape, so it’s not all heavy-duty oil paint – it’s quite delicate, I suppose you would call it.
“People get confused sometimes; they say, ‘that can’t be oil paint’, but it’s just a different way of layering it.”
To add to the ethereal feel of her work, Sara also extensively uses oil sticks – oil paint in a stick form, which can be used to achieve a drawing effect.
“I can draw in trees to a painting, and I’ll draw in the reflections in the water with the oil sticks,” she says.
“You can mix them on the canvas, and you can create all sorts of things with them; they’re very versatile and you can wipe them back and get that beautiful translucent colour on the canvas.”
The landscapes that feature in so many of Sara’s paintings, although recognisably Australian, are tinged with a softness that she believes reflects her English background, although not deliberately so.
“Australian colours in the landscape are very distinctive, and the colours in an English landscape are different – the greens are different, the sky colours are different,” she says.
“The colours here are much brighter and bolder; the light is different here. In England, everything is much softer, and all the landscape greens are much softer. Sometimes, I look at it and I think ‘that actually could be an English landscape’ – not that I’ve gone out of my way to paint an English landscape.”
Being such a prolific and practised artist does not mean, however, that Sara doesn’t deliberate over every creation – in fact, she often returns to a painting many times before she determines that it’s complete, sometimes without even knowing exactly why.
“I might paint one [painting] and then leave it, and then come back to it in a week or two and change it once I’ve had time to look at it and assess what is not right about it and what I think I can improve,” she says.
“Some of them come together straight away very quickly and I’m happy with it, but sometimes there’s things that I’m not happy with initially and I can’t see why.
“So I have it propped up on an easel in the living area of the house and I just look at it over a period of time and eventually I’ll work out what it is that’s not right; it might be a colour or a shape that I’ve got to take out or add in – any of those things, but sometimes it takes a while to work out what it is.”
There is no sign of Sara stepping away from her easel any time soon, with a tight schedule that keeps her busy year-round with constant deadlines for exhibitions in Queensland and Victoria, commissions, and gallery requests – but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
She paints every day, assisted by her faithful assistant, studio dog Daisy, who is “very supportive, and a very important part of the whole process”.
“It’s what I love doing, and I don’t ever have to retire,” she says.
“It is work, definitely, but it doesn’t seem like work because it’s what I love doing.”
Sara’s customers hail from all over Australia and overseas, although she does concede that the current economic climate has had an impact on the industry, with many people not having as much disposable income as they did.
“But having said that, I think I’m lucky that I’m in a position where I’m still doing it and still selling it,” she says.
“You just have to keep on putting it out there.”
The most important reason, perhaps, to continue to create art according to Sara, is the ability it has to bring beauty and joy to the world.
“It would be a pretty sad world without any art.”