We were lucky to catch up with Sara Woster recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sara, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

I decided to start teaching painting in my community because being an artist, and a painter specifically, has added so much to my life. I wanted to find a way to help other people find their own way into living a more creative life so I set out to create a method of learning art that is fast and brave and fun. As a result, I got a book deal to write a book about my teaching method and my own creative life. It is a memoir/how to about painting called “Painting Can Save Your Life: How and Why We Paint”.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’ve been painting since high school and making art and being part of a community of people who love art is a huge part of my life. I wish more people painted so they could also experience the joy of painting, the benefits of self-expression, and the mindfulness making art brings to a person. But I think learning to paint is perceived as being a difficult art form and many people feel too intimated to try to learn, even if they are drawn to it.

So I launched a school called The Painting School that is dedicated to helping people learn to paint, build their own creative community, and lead a more creative life. The way we teach is fun and based in art history and contemporary art. It is designed in a way that everyone is making good paintings right away.

We just moved into a new storefront in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and in the Catskills we run workshops out of a former rooming house where artists used to stay at the turn of the century. I’m proud of how many people have learned how to paint with us and how many more we will reach in the future.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The community that results from being an artist is my favorite part of it being creative and making art. I have made so many amazing friends in the art world and now I am creating this really powerful relationships with people that I teach, There is something about doing hard, creative things together that is really bonding. You have to be vulnerable to put your art out there and that is a great state of mind to be in when connecting with another person. I am lucky that I paint and write so I have great friends I met through writer’s groups and friends I’ve met at art openings or through showing together. I love nerding out with both of those groups of people on the things we love. They send bits of video of an artist painting or a section of poetry. It is a real gift to be in a community, or in some cases a subculture, of people who love the same things I do.

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

I think we just need to make sure they can work wherever they are, in an urban or a rural setting. Artists and writers and musicians need space to think and create and if society valued that important work I think we would see more spaces. The new art school we opened in Brooklyn is dedicated to that idea of space as a creative commodity. We only officially opened two days ago, so my ideas are bigger than the reality! But our goal is to build out a place where people can spread out, make art, bring their babies, have a coffee, build community. And we bought an old, old house in upstate New York right before the pandemic and my husband and I are trying to figure out a way to make sure the people who could use space to create and time in nature can have access to it. It is pretty loose right now, for example, there is a group of chamber musicians going there tomorrow who just started a chamber quartet are going there to play together for the first time. And we’re talking to a college about using it for an artist retreat. But I am not somebody who can usually afford a studio and who works on the kitchen table, so I know first hand how valuable a place to go and work is.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sarawoster.com
• Instagram: @sara_woster
• Linkedin: @sara-woster
• Youtube: @SaraJeanW

Image Credits
Maria Midoes photographed the headshot and Gisela Gueiros photographed the shot of me in the painting school. The rest are photographs I took. The book cover was done by Penguin Random House, but not specific photographer is named.