Emerging from the night: a conversation with artist Sarah Gillespie. Luminous, velvety, miraculously detailed, Moths – a series of mezzotints created by artist Sarah Gillespie – invites the viewer to contemplate the mystery of these winged night creatures. We chat with Sarah about how moths captured her fascination after a lifetime of painting landscapes,... Read more »
Can artful, poetic expression of the human entanglement with other beings and the Earth itself help bring about the changes in worldview demanded by the ecological catastrophe of our times? Peter and Sarah are uncle and niece. For many years they have been in conversation about the themes of this pamphlet, influencing each other’s thinking... Read more »
When I went to see Sarah Gillespie recently at her oak-framed Devon studio, I suggested to her that there was a serenity, almost a purity, in her art that reminded me of a swan sailing upon water. I think the image is apt partly because swans have been a theme that she has herself explored... Read more »
“Why moths?” is a question Devon mezzotint printmaker Sarah Gillespie is used to answering – being sympathetic to the animals and their status. “They’re misunderstood, overlooked and deeply unloved by most humans,” she says. “I wasn’t looking for moths when I started drawing them around ten years ago – they came and found me. Their... Read more »
Sarah Gillespie’s pencil hovers above the empty white paper. Looking out over the Devon landscape, her forensic gaze takes in a scene she is intimately familiar with. Each twist and turn, rut and stile of the paths around Slapton Ley have been engraved into her muscle memory through repeated walking; each branch and leaf, sunburst... Read more »
After rain, the garden outside Sarah Gillespie’s studio is busy and brilliant. Green nches are loud in the darker green of an apple tree. Clustered at the window, tomatoes, rain-enamelled, hang heavy and glamorous as pomegranates. Inside, propped on a mammoth Victorian easel, a parallel world is presented in black and white. Deep Lane is... Read more »
What lies at the heart of Sarah Gillespie’s practice as an artist is a deep concern for the natural environment. She has an enduring love affair with the rural world that surrounds her. Trained as a painter in Paris and the Ruskin in Oxford she has nevertheless been working in black and white, predominately charcoal,... Read more »
In separate conversations about art and landscape with two different friends, neither of whom knows the other, both encouraged me to seek out charcoal drawings by Sarah Gillespie. When I asked what it was that most appealed to them about her work, they paused amid the tumble of enthusiastic praise for her technical skill, her... Read more »
I need only look up to see that darkness is as deep and boundless as the Cosmos itself. David Hinton, Hunger Mountain Listen to the birds singing outside. But they are not outside. There is no border between them and us: no separation. Zen Master Hogen, The Other Shore Consider the hair on a bee’s... Read more »
