Magic Toadstools and Mountain Vistas

Everywhere she look, painter and fabric artist Sara Schouten sees beauty. In response, she creates art.

Sara’s acrylic and watercolour paintings are generally realistic, but subtly stylized, with deeply saturated colours and a folkloric children’s-book feel that captures the magic so many of us experience when we take the time to slow down and look closely at the natural world.

Her favourite subjects include the flora and fauna of Denman Island and the lakes and mountain vistas she encounters on Vancouver island hikes, all enhanced by her vivid imagination.

Lichens emerge from the forest floor like alien beings, a huge rising sun spreads golden rays to the edge of the canvas, a rotting stump hosts new life, tiny succulents hang over a cliff, and imagined fairylands cluster under toadstools.

Sara’s upcycled fabric art—clothing, patches, and wall-hangings—incorporates quilting, crochet, embroidery, and doilies. These are created from old clothing donated by friends or found at the Denman Island Freestore. “I like giving new life to an object that would otherwise be thrown away,” says Sara. She enjoys providing mending and alteration services for Denman Islanders.

Eyes attuned to beauty can see art everywhere, she says. “For instance, I love my rocking chair. It’s interesting, and it’s pretty.” She rejects distinctions between high art and common art, or art and non-art.

“People have all these words like tacky or kitschy, by which they really mean bad, or not classy or elevated enough, but I look at what they’re referring to and often, I love it. Maybe I don’t understand it, but it shows me how someone thought and saw things in a different way and I like looking at it. Just sitting and staring at stuff is kinda great,” says Sara.

Contact: saracschouten@gmail.com

See Sara’s work on Denman Island: Prints are available at the Denman Island Craft Shop

Website: https://saraschoutenart.squarespace.com/