Sarah Jane Lambert
SJ (b. Vermont 1979) is a mixed-media intuitive artist who works primarily in watercolors. Using water in her creative process is integral, as it helps her navigate emotions in an organic and healthy way. Her work centers around the human experience and our collective connection to nature, emphasizing the creation of dreamscapes that provide warmth and magic to the viewer. She has exhibited work in several major U.S. cities and Europe, and she received the Diderot Emerging Artist grant at the Chateau Orquevaux Artist Residency in France (December 2022). For the past two years, SJ has been illustrating her first complete tarot deck, which goes into production in March of this year. She currently lives and works from her small home on a lake in the Pacific Northwest.
Artist Statement
I have been making art to stay alive for as long as I can remember. I didn’t realize the power in making art until my 30s, when I discovered I could use my artistic voice to help others feel warmth or lift them up. During my younger years, I often felt angry at the world due to childhood traumas. Realizing that I could channel my emotions healthily through art has been a profound shift for my mental health, and each painting I create is dedicated to the dreamers.
While I am multidisciplinary, I truly love working with watercolors because of the flow and collaboration with water. You have to be open to making mistakes and let the water dictate its movement on the paper or canvas. This process calms my mind and keeps me present. For me, making art is both therapy and a magical practice—a special relationship I have cultivated with spirit after so many years of being afraid to use my voice.
www.instagram.com/sarahjanelamb.art/
Who and/or what are your influences when you were first starting out vs. now?
Although I’ve been making art since I was a child, I didn’t start showing it publicly until my early 30s. I started out making show posters for a bunch of friends in rock n’ roll/heavy psych bands and it just snowballed from there. Music has always been a huge part of my life--I spent the majority of my early to mid 20s in NYC seeing live music at all the best underground music clubs all over that city. Being a part of that kind of community and subculture gave me confidence I hadn’t really had before. I’m the type of person who can’t really listen to music without feeling a huge sense of release and I cry often at certain songs. It’s always been a big part of my identity--music and the arts in general were always there to save me when no one else was. When I started making show posters, it gave me a creative outlet to explore different themes of magic, myth, symbolism, and the divine feminine form. The people in my life by that time were so encouraging and helped me get to a place of knowing that I needed to keep going with my craft. It’s so wild to look back at my work over the last 15 years and to see how I have metamorphosed. I can look back at certain pieces during a handful of years where I experienced profound sadness while dealing with my dad’s death--and the imagery spoke for itself. Each little quadrant of time was a testament to what I had experienced in life and having the emotional space to transform my feelings through painting is ultimately what continues to save me over and over again. These days, my work is more vibrant and dreamy, hints of social commentary, but always themes of magic and healing.
What is your favorite thing about the material/s you use?
I’m multidisciplinary, so I love working with all kinds of medium--but working with watercolor is my absolute favorite at this point in my life. Perhaps it’s because I’m a water sign. Being close to bodies of water has always been vital in my life, no matter where I’ve lived; there’s something so comforting about it to me. Water has this immense power--always moving, always changing. When I start a new watercolor painting, it always begins with just water on the surface. From there I add some color by pouring watercolor paints or pigments and just let it flow and mix; it almost has a mind of its own. I let the natural movement of water manipulate the paint, essentially allowing it to speak to me. As it moves around the surface, eventually I can see images appear, as if the water is telling me what I need to paint. I know traditionally in watercolors they say you should go from light hues to dark, but sometimes I go dark hues first and then use the water to lift the dark hue to a lighter tone. This is my way of experimenting with water, like a tandem sacred practice almost, between myself and an element. In that moment it feels like magic is intervening.
What would you say is hidden just underneath the surface of your work? Meaning, what are you revealing to your viewers?
I like to say that I am casting spells through my work. Each piece of art I create is centered around the human experience and our connection to nature. I feel that much of society is so disconnected from our natural surroundings when it can be our greatest teacher if we just lean in and listen. Healing through making art is one of my main goals as an artist; and much of my development as a human has come from countless hours just staring into nature and being immersed in it. Another equally important goal I have is to use my voice when others are silenced. I am a woman, and I am a proud feminist. Every single day I count my lucky stars because I am able to be a wild child, a non-conformist free spirit and express myself. Too many women across the globe do not and may never have that luxury. I want to fight oppression by painting a magical dreamworld where we can imagine women living in symbiosis with nature; almost like a prophecy for their future self, in this lifetime or the next. I want to encourage my viewers to believe in magic--and with magic, there is light and there is dark--just like the natural balance of the world. Healing involves traveling through the darkness.
Can you tell us about a turning point in your practice? Was there a moment when things started clicking
At the beginning of the pandemic, I decided to take a significant break from working on art and took a job offer from a friend at the time in another field that in hindsight seemed too good to be true. But at the time, the world had suddenly changed, my mother had just passed away and I had always been the kind of person to be open to new places and opportunities. I saw it as just another challenge in life. My partner and I, and our animals, uprooted ourselves to a familiar place we loved dearly. Anyone who has done the same knows how hard that can be--to leave it all behind, to take a big chance. To make a very long story short, it turned into one of the most traumatic times of my life. I had made this giant move only to realize that this friend who had hired us unveiled his true identities: abusive (emotionally and physically,) narcissistic and manipulative. It was a dark time for me--one that is still difficult to even think about--I felt like I had turned my back on the one thing that kept me sane, all because this person had convinced me I needed that job and needed to subscribe to his position of power. I could no longer take the abuse; I stood up to him and had to leave because it was not a safe place to be. I was so depressed and felt broken after this experience, and it left me feeling unable to trust anyone for awhile. So I took a huge risk--I lived off some savings and dove full-time into making art. The work I made in those two years after that traumatic situation transpired into my beloved project The Tarot of Her--a 79-card feminist tarot deck that I illustrated, which I co-created with a long-time friend, Astrologist/writer/creative Melissa LaFara. I am eternally grateful to her for suggesting we finally start that project at that time, because, quite frankly, it pulled me out of the ashes. Truly some divine timing. It was a huge part of my healing process and allowed me to come back to my artistic voice. It gave me the courage to realize my art was needed in the world, as well as the courage to stand up against oppressors.
Who are three women and/or gender nonconforming artists that inspire you?
Leonora Carrington, for her magical realism and surrealist visions of alchemy and nature; she was not afraid to rebel against her upper middle class upbringing and was a founding member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s. She was making art during a time when mostly men were involved in the Surrealist movement and demanded she be treated as their equal.
Betty (Mabry) Davis, for her music and message that women are strong forces not to be reckoned with. She was banned countless times on American TV in the 1970s because she was a black woman singing about sexuality and danced “suggestively”, expressing herself through her feminine form. When I listen to her music I feel empowered and can’t help but dance and sing at the top of my lungs. Do me a favor - go put on the song “Dedicated to the Press” by Betty Davis. I promise it will stir something up inside you.
Frida Kahlo for life. I was entranced by her work before I was even ten years old, and spent a lot of time learning about her need to make art and be seen. She was ahead of her time on so many levels and experienced adversity that many of us would never be able to understand. My favorite thing about her work was her ability to paint vibrant, lush hues mixed with the profound sadness and vulnerability of her imagery.
