About me
Sarah Barto Vespermann is a classically trained artist.
She received a BFA from the University of New Hampshire and a MFA from Indiana University’s Henry Redford Hope School of Fine Arts. She resides in Providence, RI where she is continually inspired by historic architecture and interior spaces.
Sarah has returned to painting after raising two children. While her children were young, she kept her creativity flowing by working as a set designer and decorator for youth theater. She has taught art to all levels of children and adults.
In my paintings, I try to convey the mystery I feel is inherent in certain interior spaces. The mystery I am interested in capturing evokes a feeling of provocation and elusiveness. It is a reaction to my experience in various interiors where I have felt a tangible sense of history.
I have always been fascinated with historical architecture, having grown up in a house built during the Revolutionary War and living fifteen years in an 1820 Cape. I enjoy the rich color and texture of the wood paneling and beams, the slanted floor boards and low ceilings. When I am in these spaces, I invariably think of the people who inhabited them.These spaces have confined and sheltered, staged and recorded. I am left wanting to know who lived there and what it was like. The interior itself yields clues, but no answers.
The forms I create in my paintings emulate the rhythm of architectural structure and space. These forms and layers of shapes both cover up and reveal. They become clues about what is not seen and remnants of what has been left behind.
My desire to fully apprehend what these arcane spaces were like and who occupied them is heightened by the knowledge that I never will.