Artist of the Month: Sarah Gallagher

Artist of the Month: Sarah Gallagher

Julia Balestri, Staff Writer

Sarah Gallagher, ’17, is best known for her stunning artwork. From painting to charcoal, she does it all. She also helps the community as a leader of National Art Honors Society. Gallagher organizes meetings and plans new projects for the group to work on. The club’s biggest project is making portraits of orphans in different countries. This is one of Gallagher’s favorite projects because she gets to make a direct impact on children’s lives by creating something extremely personal for them to keep.

She also helps the art community on a small scale. Currently, Gallagher is helping a home-schooled eighth grader develop her art skills because she is unable to attend art classes. Gallagher is teaching her how to improve her art, and to push herself to draw things she didn’t think she could draw, like full faces instead of partial ones.

Not only is it obvious that Gallagher is an incredibly talented artist by looking at her work, she also has a multitude of awards to prove it. During her sophomore year, she drew her “Woman Underwater”, a large scale graphic drawing so detailed, it took Gallagher three months to finish it. Later, the piece was nominated for American Visions and won a silver key at the national level.

During her sophomore year, Gallagher also won three gold keys at the regional level for the Scholastic art and writing awards. And as a junior, she won five more gold keys at the regional level. To add to her already outstanding array of awards, her teachers entered her “Woman Underwater” in The Great Frame Up art competition, where she won best in show at the national level and received a cash prize.

Where do you find inspiration for your work?

“Mostly just from the people around me and people’s energies. Sometimes people give off certain energies where you kind of feel like you’re in a different environment. You can feel their presence when they walk in a room and see certain colors with certain people.”

Why do you do what you do?

“It just makes me feel good. I would probably go crazy if I didn’t do it. It’s relaxing for me and it’s like a release. I consider myself to be a creative person, so this is my outlet.”

What is a piece of advice that you would give to someone who is just starting to make art?

“Try different styles. Push yourself. Be comfortable failing. That sounds cliche, but you seriously can’t be good at it unless you’ve tried all the different approaches.”

What is something difficult about making art that many people do not know of?

“Pushing yourself. A lot of people get stuck doing one style and I think it’s important to try new styles and new mediums because your style will grow once you try everything else, and you can perfect what you like to do. Coming up with ideas is sometimes hard. You can get stuck a lot. I’m in a creative ditch right now. I don’t have any inspiration, and sometimes it helps to just go out and do stuff with friends to get inspiration. Don’t sit around because you won’t get any inspiration from just sitting there. It’s really easy to get stuck doing one thing.”

Sarah’s work can be found here: society6.com/sarahjoydesigns