FIND A FUTURE HEIR LOOM
The artist Sarah Graham’s dramatic yet delicate works depict nature on the grandest scale
Sarah Graham’s most prized possession is an old sketchbook belonging to the 20th-century painter Graham Sutherland. ‘Look at that tree with those gnarled stumps, like cut-off limbs,’ the artist says, showing me a close-up study of a trunk against a deep-orange background. It has an unsettling, quasihuman quality to it – much like her own graphite and ink works, which cover every surface of her Chelsea studio. The space is testament to Graham’s love of precious timeworn objects: every shelf is stacked with paraphernalia, from beetle entomology boxes and anatomically correct plant models to animal skulls. Behind a tiny, dried ‘Medusa’s head’ euphorbia plant on the table hangs Graham’s two-metre-tall depiction of it in pencil. Blown up to such an enormous scale, it appears suddenly uncanny, its curling tendrils tangled like wriggling snakes. ‘When you go right in on an object and look at the shadows, you get these other forms coming out – and if it is slightly monster-like, even better,’ says the artist.
Graham studied lithography at Edinburgh University, but drifted away from the subject after her degree and went to work for an antiques dealer. It was a trip to the French Pyrenees 10 years later that reawakened her love of art. ‘The place was so full of nature and very peaceful, and I just started to draw,’ she says. After leaving that job, she spent her days drawing the Natural History Museum’s collection of insects, rendering swallowtail butterflies and scorpions intricately in ink stains mottled with resin.
In 2007, she exhibited her work at the Chelsea Flower Show, where she was discovered by the gallerist Lyndsey Ingram. This month, an exclusive series of her magnolia studies will take over the gallery’s stand at Masterpiece London. ‘When I was growing up in Scotland, my mother had huge grandiflora-trees and I have always wanted to draw them,’ says Graham. ‘Their square petals have this vellum-like quality – there’s something quite nasty about them.’ She wanted to conjure a different, happier mood in the fair’s entrance, which will be adorned with largescale drawings of pale-yellow anemones.
For Graham, the thrill of the fair is in seeing her own work presented alongside Old Masters, modern classics and magnificent pieces of furniture and jewellery. ‘Nowadays, so much is a nod to the zeitgeist – what people think we want to see,’ she says. ‘But Masterpiece makes both history and quality fashionable.’ brooke theis Masterpiece London (www.masterpiecefair.com), sponsored by Royal Bank of Canada, is at the Royal Hospital Chelsea from 30 June to 6 July (preview 29 June).