British-born artist Sarah Kudirka (1968) has been based in Scotland since 2017. She paints every day in a studio filled with natural light at The Briggait, Glasgow’s old fish market.
Sarah trained as an artist and art historian (BA, first class 1990. MA, with distinction, 1991) at The Leeds University in the early ‘90s and won a few early-career awards (under her maiden name Davenport). She spent 23 years in London painting and exhibiting widely throughout. Sensations from childhood partly spent in Kenya and happy memories of holidays on the Scottish coast still feed into her work.
A member of Visual Arts Scotland and Scottish Contemporary Arts Network, Sarah served three-years as an elected Council Member of the Society of Scottish Artists, was previously a Trustee of ACME in London, and initiated global creative projects as Artist Inhouse for Arup. She also worked at Tate Modern for then Directors Vicente Todolí and Sir Nicholas Serota.
Her work is in private collections worldwide including Australia, Austria, Canada, China, England, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, New Zealand, the United States and Scotland.
Artist Statement
You know when you find something in your pocket that you picked up then forgot? Familiar but unknown, a wee treasure, your fingers feel around its surfaces, its edges. Not until you pull it out of your pocket and see it in your hand do you know what it is. Sarah Kudirka’s paintings have long been about exploring the shapes and edges of stuff, kind of like that.
Described by Jan Patience as “work that is beautiful, layered and thoughtful” these finely worked, exquisitely calm, semi-abstract oil paintings are about belongings and more broadly the concept of belonging. Overtly handmade, her work characteristically features incised, scraped, oft obliterated, deep-textured, colourful surfaces. She paints in oils mainly on linen panels but also overlays colour sketches onto Polaroid instant film snaps and found objects.
Bowl/boat forms and shell-like swirls bring to mind the age-old human story of journeying across oceans and the gathering and sharing of food. Inspired by the artist’s sketches of tideline pebbles and shells, they whisper of childhood beach days, staring into rockpools, skimming stones at the water’s edge and playing in sand dunes. Behind it is also the idea that in ancient times oceans were a conduit not a barrier to the movement of people.
*Born Sarah Davenport, the surname Kudirka that she has used since marrying in 2012, was brought here by boat when her husband’s grandparents fled occupied Lithuania in 1919.