Sarah Eden

By carefully balancing light and shadow, Sarah Eden strives to create a sense of drama and emotional resonance, inviting the viewer to contemplate the beauty of the everyday and to appreciate the beauty of the natural world.

Sarah has a passion for all animals, and her oil paintings are dedicated to celebrating the beauty of the animal world – especially the often-overlooked creatures. She is passionate about bringing these animals into the spotlight, revealing their true beauty and unique personalities to help others appreciate the joy they bring. Animals like badgers, mice, and squirrels are sometimes dismissed as pests, but through her work, Sarah hopes to change that perception and invite people to see them as the remarkable little beings she knows them to be.

Sarah's preferred style of painting is rooted in realistic representation. While her work is highly detailed, what matters most to her is capturing a true sense of form and reality. She is always striving to move beyond a two-dimensional, illustrative approach, instead aiming to convey subjects with genuine shape, weight, and solidity. She is particularly fascinated by the way light interacts with form and how it helps to define structure and depth. To achieve this, Sarah uses a careful layering of paint – working from dark to light – in a process that feels almost sculptural, gradually building a sense of volume within the piece.

She is deeply inspired by the techniques of the Old Masters, especially Caravaggio and his mastery of chiaroscuro. Sarah loves the dramatic contrasts of light and shadow that this technique offers, particularly in her still life paintings, where it allows her to create atmosphere, intensity, and a heightened sense of realism. Her ‘fruit portraits’, as she likes to refer to them, are rendered in a dramatic chiaroscuro style, to draw the viewer’s eye into the heart of the composition, creating a sense of depth, volume, and tactile presence. Her use of chiaroscuro is not merely a technical device, but a means of imbuing her subjects with a sense of mystery and allure.