Vademékum Magazine

August 2010

Magazine Feature and Cover

Sara Blake (article translated from Spanish)

We live in a digital era where we can’t deny the facility and efficiency that virtual tools can bring for us, but in that same way we’ve set aside the virtues of art’s essence, so much perfection hides human intervention. Sara Blake is an American artist, who has been able to merge the best of both parts to achieve aesthetically incomparable results, in her own words: “I love that tactile nature of drawing something by hand first, but I love the freedom and playfulness of digital. For me it was the most natural marriage.”
Art for Sara is more emotional than reasonable, she is able to convey sensations through her own thought and her own mood, that’s why her pieces can have very varied personalities, and communicate in very distinct ways. “I love my own style not because of how it looks, but because I love how it feels. It's a passion. It's like cooking or sports for some people. It's all me, and really it's the only way I know how to do things.”

If we lived constantly in surprise, we would be more propitious to be creative. If we stopped with more frequency to enjoy of our surrounding, we would have more working tools, more options to communicate, not only art related but also related to our own life. We’ve been so enclosed by models of perfection that we don’t value those miscalled imperfections, which at the hour of truth, are the ones who are able to synthetize a work, is what makes it human.

Keeping ourselves active and varied leads to more experiences, this means that we’ll have more things to say. Sara is not only an illustrator, but also an art director, designer and writer, what gives her even more tools when she has to communicate. All of this knowledge is reflected in her workflow, "I write more often than I sketch. I try to capture how I feel, who I think I am, and how I relate to the world. I find that articulating that first helps me figure out what my next piece will be."

Sara is one of those artists that we should keep an eye on, because she will definitely keep surprising through her art, which each times gets more recognition.