Story & Lesson Highlights with Sarah Stone of Ventura/Los Angeles County

We recently had the chance to connect with Sarah Stone and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Well, I have insomnia so I get a lot of time around the clock to think about things going on in the world. I even did a triptych about this titled “Insomnia” (attached below) which depicts different hours of wakefulness throughout the night. When my middle-of-the-night busy-brain turns on I try to steer my anxious thoughts towards my works in progress. I’m very good at internally visualizing each painting and can “work” on them in my mind, changing colors and trying out new compositional elements. By six the crows start talking, so I either put a pillow over my head (doesn’t work) or make a strong cup of coffee and scribble down whatever ideas came to me in the dark. This starts my day with a stack of new sketches, notes and plans of action to work on.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My grandfather was a rodeo rider in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The romance of this family legend gave me, a kid living in a small, unexciting NJ suburb, a burning desire to run away and join a rodeo myself. So, I booked it to the Coast with $200 and an armload of art and found a ground-level job making props and painting murals for a low budget movie company, the legendary New World Pictures of Roger Corman.
This was my entry into the colorful “rodeo” of the entertainment world. I continued to work in the film business for many years designing sets, murals and props, gaining experience and skills that have laid the groundwork for my current multi-disciplinary art practice.
I call my art style, “Pop Folk Narrative” which describes the influences of storytelling, outsider art, and contemporary culture that inspire me. My colorful and stylized paintings incorporate collage, assemblage, illustration, mural making and photography to create captured moments in time of people and animals I have seen and sketched. In these documentations and examinations, I try to describe a sense of the essential energy and magic I feel surrounding the simple acts of living.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What breaks the bonds between people—and what restores them?
This is an unusual question, let’s see if I can do it justice. When I was a kid my parents liked to walk around our neighborhood looking at houses. I loved looking into the windows and imaging myself inside looking out. What TV shows were they watching? Did they have a pet? Was there ice cream in their freezer? And for a second, I would be in that house, with the flocked wallpaper, smelling soup, seeing a kid with her parents walking outside.
There is an expression: “We are all background characters in someone else’s movie.” That idea intrigues me because it expands “my story” to include you, and the people behind you, and the birds, and that cat over there. We are all in the same movie, sometimes as the hero, sometimes just deep background.
In our current timeline some people have decided to make only their story the important one, while other people’s stories and histories are being silenced, rewritten or disappeared. This is not new, but now the “de-historians” seem to be proceeding with a vengeance.
My little voyeuristic self peeking into my neighbors’ lives made me aware of people who, though living differently than me, are part of my community. To restore what is being lost, I feel we must all in our own ways become witnesses and culture bearers to hold and carry forward so many stories that are being erased.

What have been the defining wounds of your life—and how have you healed them?
I don’t spend much time thinking about wounds. There are plenty, but I don’t want them to be seen as defining my life or my art. That said, I will share that I am a cancer survivor. The story is kind of interesting. I joined “23 and Me” (the DNA website) to discover relatives. Through that I met a cousin who lived in Canada who informed me about mutual family members who had an uncommon genetic form of cancer they thought I should look into. She also revealed to me that I had a brother I didn’t know about! (We have since connected and he’s a great addition to my life!) Through genetic testing I learned I had that gene, and in fact, had a quite advanced and previously undiagnosed cancer. Thankfully this news arrived literally in the nick of time. A few more months could have been fatal. The main thing that helped me heal, aside from my excellent doctors, was knowing my artist life was waiting for me, and believing with complete certainty that I was going to get back to it. Cancer is a curve ball no one expects, and it sets your “in progress” plans way off to the side. Cancer, and the Covid lockdown that came almost immediately after I got back on my feet, gave me a more focused perspective on time and priorities.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Whose ideas do you rely on most that aren’t your own?
When I paint I always listen to something, whether it is a podcast, audio book or one of the dozens (hundreds?) of musicians I enjoy listening to. Absorbing and contemplating other people’s words and music gives me new ways of seeing. Great lyrics and poetic word combinations will give me ideas for painting titles. Interesting collaborations between musicians of different genres, like (Benin singer) Angelique Kidjo and (classical cellist) YoYo Ma, or (country singer) Keith Urban and (hip-hop artist) Breland, for instance, inspire me to think about eccentric ways I can mix up or reinterpret my own projects. If you’d like some playlists, I share favorite listens and reads in my newsletter. https://substack.com/@sarahstoneart

Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
A few close friends of mine have died, some were shockingly young. It’s never too early to consider how you want to be remembered because, honestly, we don’t know when our last day will be. To live with intention and integrity is a good plan. I’ve planted saplings which are now mature oaks, established a watering area for local wildlife, and have created a few bird and butterfly attracting gardens. So if people said “Sarah planted trees and created habitats for local animals” I’d be happy with that. Looking forward I’d like to spend the rest of my days making new friends, making art, being an advocate for nature, and always looking for the magic hidden in the mundane. If that’s my legacy, that would be a good one.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sarahstoneart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahstoneart/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Sarah.Stone.Artist
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTSnLd_A0-hjXklfNH4a7-g?view_as=subscriber

Image Credits
Bio Photo by Tony Pinto https://tonypinto.net