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

Sarah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your creative career?

My first bona fide paycheck job was Fry Cook at our local McDonalds. That job lasted until I couldn’t get the smell of fry grease out of my skin, so, about 2 weeks.

Many other jobs followed: cut and paste artist at a novelty gift company, color spec artist at a direct mail advertising agency, lunch counter manager at a health food store, receptionist, data entry clerk for a big box warehouse, booze jockey at a dive bar, and art model at Princeton University (enabling me to factually say I attended art classes at Princeton.)

The most influential job, however, in terms of life and professional skills, was artist and Set Decorator for films and television shows. The up and down is, freelance film jobs got my rent paid, while also affording me time off in between gigs to travel, make art and pursue personal interests. BUT, in between gigs the paychecks S T O P, and the only thing that will get the next one in the bank is H U S T L E ™️.

That means, make friends, stay in touch, keep looking for new opportunities, don’t get hurt by rejection, and never stop moving forward.

Decorating sets taught me that perfection is the enemy of done. When the cameras roll in, you best not still be standing there holding swatches up to the wall. Similarly, when the gallery drop-off deadline is tomorrow, t o d a y is not a good day to realize your oil painting still isn’t dry. (Been there, done that.)

I also learned that I like problem solving. Finding the keys to enigmas, whether it’s how to tell a brief character story in 3 dimensions, or how to compose the elements of a painting in 2, gives me a comforting sense of order and accomplishment. With so many things seemingly out of our control in daily life, my studio is a sanctuary of solution in a world of conundrum.

Sarah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

When I decided to become a full-time artist, I was most interested in creating visual narratives about our (human) relationship with nature.

The most pressing concern we face at present is climate change, which stems from pollution, which stems from lack of empathy. The underlying theme of my artworks is transformation, as actual metamorphosis and as a metaphor for the internal and external process of evolving how we see ourselves in relation to other people and living things on the planet.

My inspirations are rooted in biological studies, dream psychology, traditional mythologies, and folk/outsider arts. I paint with mixed acrylic media on wood or synthetic paper, connecting ancestral mark-making and cultural storytelling to the sensibilities and aesthetics of modern living. I call this style, “contemporary pop folk art.”

I am drawn to subjects that have both light and dark characteristics. Energetic, discordant colors and lines surrounding central figures could represent destructive chaos, or ecstatic life-force. Both can be true. I make art to express the many mixed feelings I have about being alive in this breathtaking, terrifying, Anthropocene moment.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

I know of (anecdotally) a few artists and dealers who claim to be successful at marketing and selling NFTs. That said, I know many more who aren’t. I don’t know enough about the business end of NFTs to make an educated statement about the financial viability of that medium, but I do know that NFTs have become synonymous with scams. I am approached about 10X a day on Instagram by “collectors” who want to buy my art as NFTs, using crypto currency as payment. If NFTs were 100% legit, they wouldn’t be as attractive to criminals as they seem to be.

But my main reason for being against NFTs is this: the blockchain required to verify crypto transactions requires an enormous amount of energy. The global electricity usage for managing crypto assets, i.e.: the currency and the storage data for the NFTs themselves, is between 120 and 240 billion kilowatt-hours per year, a range that exceeds the total annual electricity usage of many individual countries, such as Argentina or Australia. This electric energy usage emits 140 ± 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year into the atmosphere. (source: www.thewhitehouse.gov climate change fact sheet.)

With our global climate in freefall, NFT production and crypto assets are not what we should be engaging in right now.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Everything I read, see, listen to and learn ultimately affects my life and creative philosophy. Some cultural influences that have had big impacts on my life and art include (in no order and not a complete list):

• Zap Comix
• Any poetry by Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings
• Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes
• All films by Hayao Miyazaki and Guillermo del Toro
•.World music, minimalist music, dance music
• Tibetan Book of the Dead
• Seven Life Lessons of Chaos, John Briggs
• Tao te Ching
• The Places that Scare You, Pema Chodron

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sarahstoneart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahstoneart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SarahStoneArt/
• Other: Art Newsletter on Substack: https://sarahstoneart.substack.com Threads: @domestic.terrierist

Image Credits
Studio Portrait by: Miguel Pagliere