Sara Pope

Sara’s early commercial work, in fashion, beauty and media proved to be the inspiration for her art. Working in oils and acrylic, she makes use of bold, attractive colours with high shine gloss. Her painting style imitates the slickness of advertising, whilst provocatively subverting its themes. Sara is best known for her seductive paintings of bold, colourful, voluptuous lips. She aims to capture the glamour and seductive power conveyed by a pair of lips. All her paintings from this series start with a photographic shoot, a model and some make up. Exploring the ideas of communication, she asks the model, to think of emotions, love, happiness or flirtation, which she captures photographically. The painting process for these Lip portraits involves several thin layers of oil, being overlaid over each other to create a translucent, glass like quality. Sara is also known for her portraits, most notably having a portrait of the Pope accepted into the Vatican collection. Sara works in series’ or ‘collections’, painting a body of work with common stylistic elements and colour palette, as with seasonal collections in fashion.
Sara is currently represented by 17 galleries in the UK and internationally. Last year Sara completed successful solo shows with Jealous Gallery, London and Lilford Gallery, Folkestone during the Folkestone Triennial, as well as a joint London show with Magnus Gjoen. 2018 began with a solo show at D Contemporary gallery, Mayfair, London. Sara has completed collaborations with The Big Issue, BareMinerals makeup, PIAS music label and Saatchi&Saatchi, ME London and Swedish fashion label Limitato. She is also the first British female artist in over 70 years to have a piece of work accepted into the Vatican collection.