About

Hi.  I’m Sarah.  

I play tennis, I race sailboats, I teach writing, I'm married and have two beautiful daughters, I love watching NCAA basketball, I on-again, off-again run and spin, and I don't do yoga.  I also like to eat out and watch TV.  And I love ART. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

Art has been a part of my life since I was a kid.  My grandmother, who was an artist, taught my sisters and I an appreciation of art when we were very young.  I studied Art History for a while in college (switched to Geography and Marine Policy?) and discovered the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.  I haven't looked back.  These days, when I can, I plan whole days, whole weekends, even whole weeks around visiting an art museum.  I read about art, in summers I work in an art gallery, and I’m finding that when I write, I’m writing mostly about art.  Art has a way of just showing up in my every day, though I don’t hang out with artists or belong to any art clubs and my friends are not necessarily into art.  That’s OK.  I keep it pretty personal and on my terms. 

My family is in on my art thing.  My husband, John, is a great museum and gallery companion because he knows to let me wander, and then we talk together about what we've seen over a long meal.  And my daughters have become my built-in travel companions, trekking with me up and down the northeast corridor and beyond to some of the greatest museums in the world.  They are now entering their adult lives appreciating everything that is beautiful, including art.  My grandmother would be very proud of them and satisfied that I have allowed art to become a part of their own experience in the world. 

Entrance to Somes Sound from Southwest Harbor

Fitz Hugh Lane

1852

Although I can and will go anywhere and find beautiful art, I must say that I don’t need to go far from my home.  I live on Mount Desert Island in Maine.  It’s a sublimely beautiful place, and when I moved here with my family in 1988, I quickly learned that the island was, and continues to be, a place of inspiration for many artists. Often on walks to the shore, hikes into the mountains, weekend sails around The Great Harbor, or even simply drives to the grocery store, I pass the same scenes that the earliest artists who came to the island painted. The island is like a museum filled the views of the artists, from the 19th century Romantic Realists to the Impressionists, Expressionists, and now, the 21st-century visions of contemporary artists.  I have trekked across the island in search of the places from which the artists worked, finding the same views, the same granite outcrops, even the same luminous qualities.  My search continues.  

John in search of the sublime 

and

Thomas Cole's View Across Frenchman's Bay from Mount Desert Island, After a Squall, 1845

March 2012

So here’s my blog:  my musings about art and art in my life, how art directs and defines my life, and how art makes the world “whole and comprehensible”.  For me.  

This blog will also be a repository for my writing which needs, like most any writing, feedback.  So please comment.