THE CAPTAIN'S ART

About

Sara Captain is an Italian-born, internationally-bred artist based in London, with a great passion for portraiture and of course David Bowie, her ever-inspiring muse. Her soulful images of him on humble materials, such as large reclaimed wooden boards, have gained her quite a following.  More generally, she uses her sensitive, arresting portraits of friends and stars to address the existential questions we all have, focussing on how the inner world can be seen through charcteristic expressions, body language etc.  Her work is characterised by a 'less is more' approach, a constant search for beauty and meaning. She will paint what she feels, be it figurative or abstract, detailed or spontaneous, and refuses to be pigeonholed into one particular style, trusting her work will be recognisable even if diverse. The last few years have been charmed, momentuous and highly creative for her, and she has exhibited to great success across Europe and in the USA. Her paintings are eagerly sought after and collected worldwide.

Influences

Sara Captain's influences are many, and diverse. She admires the intellectual breadth of the great Renaissance painters, as well as the immediacy of Expressionists,  abstract or otherwise: Schiele, Kline, Rothko. She loves Gerhard Richter's cretive freedom and versatility. Her omnivorous art diet includes reference points as varied as the Japanese Hokusai and Ikenaga; the comics masters Pratt and Manara, or contemporary painters like Hope Gangloff. Given her broad general knowledge, history and culture in the wider sense feed her imagination, too. More than anything, though, it's the places she travelled to and lived in that made the greatest impression on her work: the colours and smells of Nantucket (USA), the skies and elegance of Paris and the multicultural liveliness of London...

Being a very precocious child Sara would observe and observe, and then draw endlessly. Coming from a long line of artists, she was encouraged and taught to paint very early on. However, it is the great masters, whom she had a burning desire to emulate, that she regards as her best teachers. Choosing to read History of Art rather than going down the art school path would give here a solid theortical framework and an endless source of inspiration. For a hungry, fertile mind like hers, this network of references is a great boon. As for the other aspects of painting, she prefers to perfect them through practice, experimenting and just going with the flow, thus preserving that unique, imperfect originality.

Formation

Career

While still at university Sara was headhunted by an advertising agency and emplyed as an illustrator, occasionaly photographer, copywrighter.. factotum. She soon started to make a name for herself in illustration, seeing several books featur her work published. Yet, the success in commercial illustation sllowly stifled her creativity, and she took a clean break from it all to concentrate on education, founding a language school in London. But can an artist ever really stop? When the moment to return to Art in it purest form came, her work had matured and she was creatively on fire. The response has been extraordinary ever since. Her work has been in great demand; she has had international success with her many exhibitions, including a sold out show in Dublin this year. Always excited and curious to experiment, she will keep striving to improve, surprise and take her work somewhere uncharted, somewhere new.