Revelstoke artist Sarah Hicks is thrilled to announce her upcoming solo art exhibit, Cosmos Out of Chaos, set to inspire visitors at Art Gallery Kimberley from March 7 to 17.

With a passion for the natural world, Sarah attempts to capture its beauty in her paintings, inviting viewers to share in her deep connection to the environment in the hope this will inspire them to cherish and protect it.

Raised in rural Saskatchewan, Sarah’s childhood was filled with a deep love and respect for nature. Spending her days exploring; photographing; and drawing the local fauna, she often imagined the landscapes before human development: the grasslands and parkland ecosystems that once thrived, now replaced by fields; houses; and cattle.

Today, Sarah’s vivid imagination continues to see the pristine beauty of western Canada’s mountains: the glaciers in their former glory; the past abundance of caribou and salmon; free-flowing rivers; old growth forests where cut blocks now lie. Yet, these daydreams are stained with what Sarah calls “an unwavering grief for the current state of the climate crisis.”

Sarah says, “While it is hard to not get completely overwhelmed, we still need to hold onto hope to adapt and mitigate, to “create cosmos out of chaos” (personal communication, Robert Sandford, September 22, 2022)”.

During her time at the University of Alberta Augustana campus, where she pursued a degree in Kinesiology with a focus on Outdoor Education, Sarah discovered her talent for painting, which has since evolved into a powerful tool for environmental advocacy.

Working primarily in watercolour and acrylic, her stylistically flowy scenes are a blend of minimalist aesthetics and intricate detail and capture the vastness of the Canadian wilderness. Her work is created using either reference photos from her travels or en-plein-air in the backcountry.

Despite working primarily as a painter, the concept for “Cosmos out of Chaos” has come from a love for animals and the outdoors, manifested through an eclectic collection of vintage materials.

Sarah explained, “You could say it all started with an ever-growing pile of retro National Geographic magazines that I used to dumpster dive for as a kid.” Other materials used are vintage photographs; maps; old Sierra Club magazines; Gardner Dam development propaganda booklets from the 50’s and 60’s; and old pro- and anti- forestry pamphlets from the ‘60s onwards.

As Sarah’s pile of magazines and maps grew alongside concerns for the climate crisis, the idea emerged to overlay drawing, painting, and collage on to film photographs of places that reflect on humanity and climate change’s impacts on the environment.

Sarah’s exhibit welcomes visitors from Thursday to Sunday, 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and from Monday to Wednesday, by appointment.

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