Sara Wilks is a freelance artist and photographer with a creative practice that spans photography, painting, illustration, and creative education. Whether she’s photographing a wrestling match, developing an abstract painting, or teaching others to see the world through a more creative lens, Wilks is drawn to moments that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Sara Wilks is an artist whose work thrives at the intersection of movement and observation…
A curling stone sliding across the ice.
A tennis player reaching for a difficult shot.
A quick expression during a family photo session.
These are the types of moments that continue to inspire her work across multiple mediums.
Photography
Photography is something that has always been a part of Sara Wilks’ creative practice, but is especially prevalent in the area of sports photography and lifestyle photography, two areas that may seem quite distinct on the surface but that are both driven by timing. The moment a wrestler changes their position, the split-second it takes for the rally to switch during a tennis match or for a curling team to acknowledge a successful shot — these are the moments that Wilks likes to capture. She is interested in what may disappear if you do not get the shot. Her photographs capture authenticity.
Painting, Fine Art and Illustration
Sara Wilks is also a practicing artist and illustrator, working in both hyper-realist and abstract mediums. The works on her web site range from the incredibly accurate images to the more free and gestural paintings, demonstrating her ability to explore different visual mediums to tell stories. Many of her paintings seem to stem from the sense of movement, emotion or visual pattern that you would often find in everyday experiences. A photograph from a sporting event may become an abstract painting at a later date and a quiet observation made on a walk could also lead to an illustration. Her work does not seem confined to just one particular way of making images and her fine art is showcased in galleries both online and in person, although she still seems fascinated by anything that asks her to stretch and play within art practices in order to find new ways of expressing an idea.
