Sara Dare

Sara Dare is an abstract artist whose practice explores the intersection of geometry, embodiment, and psychological space. Working across a range of scales on paper, linen, and canvas, she employs fluid materials including ink, oil, emulsion, acrylic, and coloured pencil to create works that balance formal abstraction with bodily and emotional resonance.

Drawing on geometric abstraction, particularly the works of Kenneth Noland, Dare reimagines familiar forms through a feminist lens. Recurring motifs such as the vesica piscis, chevron, circle, and void-like shapes oscillate between abstraction and bodily reference, evoking themes of femininity, autonomy, vulnerability, and transformation. These forms are never fixed in meaning; instead, they invite multiple readings, shifting between the playful and provocative, the symbolic and the formal.

Dare’s works often begin with an invitation to the viewer before revealing a subtle sense of tension or unease. Psychologically charged forms push against the edges, split open, protrude, or recede, creating a dynamic interplay between attraction and discomfort, humour and confrontation, sanctuary and exposure.

Scale is carefully considered to create the illusion of physiological and psychological space. Through symmetry, repetition, and the manipulation of form, her compositions can suggest tunnels, apertures, archways, or bodily interiors—spaces that feel at once intimate and imposing. Recent works have drawn on personal experiences of bodily change, exploring how individual narratives intersect with broader cultural understandings of womanhood.

The artist’s physical presence remains visible throughout the work. Layers accumulate slowly, surfaces reveal their making, and gestures remain deliberately human rather than polished. Colour is approached instinctively and emotionally, used not simply as a formal device but as a means of eliciting visceral responses and deepening the relationship between viewer, body, and image.