Sarah Barker Brown

The Lives of Women…

“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves” Mary Shelley

Sarah Barker Brown is a figurative painter whose focus is on the female body and within it the inner emotions as well as the exterior lives of women. Intimate moments, the depth of female friendships, the social dimensions of being a woman and celebrating sexuality, seduction and pleasure, all illuminated through a lens of nostalgia and tenderness. 

In recent works (2019-22) Barker Brown has focussed her paintings on what might have been seemingly everyday moments which have now been amplified by a global pandemic, where intimacies are missed and treasured in memory. What were once simple pleasures are now tender and intense on reflection, in a time where these experiences have been stripped away. 

In some of these paintings (Summer of ‘76 & The Swimmers), the backgrounds are stripped out - emptied, unanchored to a particular place, space or time, reflecting this flattened time. Instead her focus is solely and importantly on the people- always women - in their activities. Whether in solitude, caught in concentrated thoughtfulness,  or the smile and easy, relaxed proximity to a friend, sitting outside with no other purpose than companionship and connection.

In the Legs series there is a focussing in on the body and, in contrast to the emptied out backgrounds, highly decorative dense layered ink transfer patterns created through stripping and peeling back the print, slowly revealing itself, the process both uncertain and fragile, mirroring our uncertain times. 

The Readers Wives Project is an on-going exploration of redefining representations of female sexual expression, freedom and pleasure. The source photographs appeared in men’s magazines in the 70’s and 80’s, sent in by the readers, and the project is a record of contemporary social, sexual and emotional lives expressed with a mixture of nostalgia, confrontation, pleasure and seduction. Ordinary women, often in everyday domesticity, slipping momentarily into a secret life to play with their identity. 

These are paintings of women of different ages and shapes depicted how they wished to be seen and brings to the fore multiple representations of female sexuality, ownership and enjoyment.  Through these celebratory paintings Barker Brown challenges the context of what female sexiness stereotypically looks like in the media in the 21st century. These are not polished women airbrushed into perfection, these are real women, proud of their bodies, glorying in their skin, bold, fun and playful.

Bodies and body parts are loaded with cultural symbolism particularly for women– public and private, positive and negative, political, economic, sexual and moral. All these works are a celebration and elevation of the female body, but also remind us of both women’s struggle for empowerment and control of their bodies, and the complexities that is associated with attempts to claim that for themselves. 

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Sarah Barker Brown is a London-based artist with a degree in Classical studies, a training in Footwear Design from Cordwainers College and a previous life founding and running a successful footwear company.

She graduated from the Art Academy with a First in Fine Art in 2017, winning the 2016 Kennerly Prize for Academic Excellence and 2015 United Society of Artists Bursary.

Recently her work has been selected for the Every Woman Biennial 2021 Salon Exhibition, the Society of Women Artists 2020 Exhibition, the final of the Holly Bush Emerging Woman Painting Prize 2020 where she won the Mantangi Prize, and INGDiscerning Eye 2020. Summer of ‘76 was selected for stage 2 John Moores Painting Prize 2020.

Early in 2019 she co-curated and exhibited in Hidden Worlds at Newington Gallery, London SE17. She also has had work included in Beep International Painting Exhibition 2018 in Swansea, RSMA 2018 Annual Exhibition and INGDiscerning Eye 2019 and 2018, both at the Mall Galleries, London, and Sex! Human Construction and Human Connection, 2018 at The Crypt Gallery, London.

Sarah from Hull, 1985, 2017 was selected for the Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize 2017 exhibition at King’s Place, London.

Solo exhibitions include Private Lives as part of her Artist residency at BFC cafe, Crouch End, London, Life Stories and The Lives of Others at her studio as part of the Crouch End Open Studios in 2018 and 2019.

Her up-coming group show is Telling Tales in Crouch End London.

Her work is held in private collections both here and abroad.

She would love to hear from you - either DM her on instagram - sarahbarkerbrown - or send an email on the contact page. To keep up to date with her news, please sign up for the newsletter below.