We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Hawkes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Something I love to do in my practice is to reinterpret personal experience, both my own and those of others, through the lens of folklore and art history.

My mother was diagnosed with early stage but aggressive cancer in the fall of last year. Her busy life quickly devolved into a continual stream of doctor’s appointments, surgical consultations, and chemo treatments. She lost her strength, her hair, and all the color in her face. Watching this happen to my mom, whom I’m very close with, was difficult to say the least. I never considered making art about the experience until one day she surprised me by asking me to.

“I don’t relate to the cancer art I see.” She told me. “It’s all about fighting and winning and battling this disease. I don’t think this is about winning or losing or being a hero. It’s about surviving another day.” We talked more about what her experience had meant to her. Significantly, she remarked that the only good thing about cancer was that it “made her grateful to be a woman. Women are there for each other.”

With that remark in mind, I painted a large scale version of the Deposition of Christ, featuring women supporting a patient in the center. They physically and emotionally support her as she hangs suspended in the air just surviving.

The painting meant so much to my mom and many other women battling health conditions. We need to remember to emphasize the experience of being sick as much as we emphasize the experience of getting well.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always been an artist, but becoming a painter was thanks to a diligent high school teacher who insisted I learn oil painting. From there, and based on the work I was already generating, I was offered a scholarship to a good university for illustration. I’d advise young creatives to go in the direction their work naturally leads. What industry does your work fit best in? Try that.

From there I decided to pursue a masters degree in illustration, gradually entering new industries where my work naturally fit. I paint fast and I paint big, lending my work to murals. I like to reference folktales, history, and motifs, leading me to conduct journalistic interviews of others and reinterpreting their stories. Reinterpreting the stories of others has also lead to editorial and book illustration.

Building your craft is obviously the most challenging thing a creative faces, but the solution is simple; Give yourself time, make lots of work, and learn technique to cover the skills you lack. More challenging, but just as important, is getting to know yourself as a creative. What work do you love to make? What work do you relate to? What work do you hate? Why do you make what you make?

Getting to know myself as an artist has been as important as any other single thing. Learning that my work hinges on people, specifically cultivating healing and empathy between people, has motivated every move since then. If a project aligns with this philosophy, it’s likely I can do it well!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

To find your path, you have to go down a lot of wrong ones. My first year as an undergraduate, I was certain that I wanted to do concept art for film. It was only in talking to professionals in that field that I realized, years later, that the lifestyle wasn’t something I would thrive in. After that I turned to children’s books, as the lifestyle seemed to perfectly align with how I work best. After two years signed with an prestigious agency, I was unprofessionally and without ceremony dropped by my agent. My taste and style had evolved, and my agent no longer felt I “fit in” despite my best efforts to adapt to the needs of the agency itself.

This could have been a massive hit to my confidence if I hadn’t already learned that rejection is often the best redirection. Either my work wasn’t ready for the children’s book industry, or the industry wasn’t quite ready for me. I decided to give myself time to develop a portfolio that more closely mirrored the children’s book work I most resonated with, and pursue other industries. As a result, I’ve worked in spaces I never would have imagined, and I know there are still children’s books in my future if I choose.

The creative who make it aren’t the most talented or the most calculated. Often they are the people who never stop trying and the people willing to fail. They work doggedly and determinedly. That is the kind of creative I want to be.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Never gatekeep. The more goodness and knowledge and help you put out into the world the more comes back to you. I decided early on in my career to never keep back anything I could share with other creatives, and it has helped me tenfold. The best networking is a net positive for everyone involved. Real networking is building a community, and giving to that community. This simple practice has done more for my business than any amount of followers, fancy advertising, or anything else.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sarahhawkesart.weebly.com
• Instagram: @sarah.hawkes.art
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits

Images by Sarah Hawkes and Timothy Hawkes