Fog, wild lavender, moss on stone — these early visual impressions set Sarah Winkler on a path at an early age. Thanks to a childhood spent exploring the woodlands and moors in and around her Manchester birthplace, she developed a keen interest in the natural world. Decades later, she creates large-scale paintings in her adopted home of Colorado. The artist has an exhibition at Vail International Gallery, which kicks off with an artist reception today from 5-8 p.m. The show will be up in the gallery until March 5.
Winkler’s work focuses on what’s above and below the surface of the earth. Mountains, lakes and valleys are portrayed with their sub-surface counterparts on her large-scale paintings — several of which will be in her solo show at the gallery. She says they’re not so much metaphorical, as poetic.
“They exist in the realm of the wondrous,” explained the artist. “A bridge between the real and the fantastic. A place that is familiar yet the visuals are heightened through color, texture and light. “
“She can create a multi-faceted landscape,” said Marc LeVarn, co-owner of Vail International Gallery. “They’re beautiful, but they delve below the surface and show you things related to geologic time. So they’re not static in that sense. It’s not just the surface, but also the fossil record — having an ocean-bed fossil at the top of a high peak, say. This is the sort of thing that makes you think. People love her work for the beautiful aspects, but they love the work in a deeper level over time.”
Winkler’s painting process is both layered and lengthy. She begins with direct experience traveling through the landscape, usually photographing or sketching on site.
“I take that material, paired with a little geological and historical research, and start creating sketches in a small collage format,” she said. “These collages use papers of abstract textures that are of my own design based on basic patterns found in nature.”
After amassing her collage sketches, she hones in on one to begin a larger painting with.
“The paintings are created in distinct and separate hard-edge layers filled with a texture that mimics the forces of nature in a landscape,” she explained. “I often incorporate crushed minerals found in landscapes into the paintings, too.”
Those crushed minerals can offer moments of discovery for the viewer; Winkler refers to them as buried treasure.
“They are subtle and don’t overwhelm the image, but peer in closely and you might just find crushed obsidian, powdered turquoise, gold mica flake, pink granite, red rock and more,” the artist said. “I like to let the viewer visually mine a painting as I often do when walking through an actual landscape.”
She also prefers to paint in a large scale, in order to have the painting feel like an environment.
“ I want to feel absorbed and surrounded by the moments and gestures within the imagery,” she said. “Paintings have a natural scale that feels right. Too big, too small can lessen the impact of a piece.”
She is helped in these large-scale works by her husband, who works side by side with her in the studio.
“He has skills in wood, metal, industrial sewing fabrication and construction,” she explained. “He prepares, finishes and builds all of the wood panel painting surfaces. They are exquisite to work on and built to last an eon.”
A fitting tribute to artwork that immortalizes a specific place by capturing the here-and-now while referencing the thousands of years that helped produce it. When she’s inspired by a subject, she spends a lot of time visiting it as well as delving into its history.
“After the initial spark of interest in a subject, I tend to revisit a place at different times of day, seasons and weather to get a sense of its changing moods,” Winkler said. “ I also do geological and historical research. I don’t just want to look at a landscape and portray it, but rather look inside it, discover its character and come to learn why it looks the way it does. All of that knowledge gained in research allows me the freedom to capture the essence of a place and my experience of it too.”
Part of Winkler’s own experience of a place — as well as her artistic process — is celebrating color.
“Color is life. It’s oxygen,” she said. “Made of light and energy — color carries the full emotional impact of the artwork. I grab color inspiration from the rocks in landscapes, the seasonal color shifts in forests, the gray of a thunderstorm cloud and the moonrise over snow-packed peaks. Curating the right balance of colors and textures in a painting captures that sense of life.”
Though her early life was shaped by a childhood spent in both Manchester, England, as well as Borneo, Colorado is home for Winkler.
“Colorado is basecamp for the adventures that lie ahead,” she explained.
Winkler and her husband work in a custom-built art studio on their property, which sits on a mountain with a 9,000-foot peak in the Front Range, just outside of Denver. Her favorite Colorado spots include the areas in and around Leadville, the San Juans, Crested Butte, Telluride, Independence Pass, Maroon Bells, Gore Range, the Colorado Trail, and many more.
“It really is the most scenic state I’ve lived in,” she said.
And just like the landscapes she depicts, her artwork doesn’t stay still.
“I see my work surprising me with more experimental compositions, complex color relationships and deep layers with maximal texture,” she said. “I see new subjects on the horizon like tropical, volcanic, rivers and oceans.”
For more information on Sarah Winkler, visit VailGallery.com.
What: Sarah Winkler Artist Reception and Exhibition
Where: Vail International Gallery, Vail
When: Today, 5-8 p.m.
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