Sarah Cotton
Sarah Cotton is a self-taught oil painter based in Los Angeles, CA. She has a BA in Studio Art from Georgetown University, where she focused on photography and printmaking. She began oil painting in 2021, while portraiture and figurative work have remained the focal point of her practice. Her work explores the energy and emotionality of those around her, as well as her relationship with herself and others, and often represents queerness & familiar moments of the human experience. Using a combination of precise marks and expressive colors, Cotton’s work is both representative and evocative.
Collect Bean: What does growth mean to you?
Sarah Cotton: Growth, to me, is change. I always feel like I don’t know what I don’t know, and growth feels like finding out what those things are. Being open to making mistakes, getting uncomfortable, learning, adapting, becoming more aligned with myself and with the universe, and leaving things behind that no longer serve me. As an artist, it’s hating what I finished last week (just kidding…. sort of).
Collect Bean: What is the kindest thing someone can tell you about your work?
Sarah Cotton: That they related to it in some way, especially if it made them feel uncomfortable or sad. I was often told that art should make you feel good, and I really resent that now. The other thing I love to hear is that somebody wants to put my work on their wall. Physical spaces feel really important and sacred to me. For somebody to appreciate my work enough to want it to inhabit their space — that’s a huge compliment to me.
Collect Bean: If you could be in a show with any artist, who would it be and why?
Sarah Cotton: Jenna Gribbon. Her work is so vulnerable and raw, and I’m obsessed with the subject matter. Her style is so different from mine, I love it. Her brushstrokes feel very alive and fluid, and I simply can’t imagine painting in her style. It's ASMR-level pleasing to me. I find her work thematically important and thought-provoking, and I want mine to feel that way, too. She’s definitely my gay art icon. I aspire to be like her someday.
Collect Bean: How does where you grew up influence your work?
Sarah Cotton: I grew up in a very conservative and heteronormative town in Connecticut. If anything, my work feels like it’s going against the entire grain of where I grew up. As a gay artist, I love being able to use my work to represent queerness. I had almost no queer representation whatsoever until I left my hometown, which now feels absurd. It just wasn’t even a thing. So, I hope that my work can be a voice for queerness, and all the beauty and pain that comes with it. Also, it felt taboo to discuss hard things growing up, so my work sometimes overcompensates for that.
Collect Bean: How do you decide on the subject matter for a painting?
Sarah Cotton: The subject matter for my work often feels like it decides itself. Something will strike me — usually an emotion or train of thought, that I want to sit with and explore for longer. My work is almost always figurative, and the subject is often either myself or another person that I am feeling inspired by or curious about. Lately, I’ve been doing mostly self-portraiture because I’ve been spending a lot of time with myself, self-reflecting, and going through the weeds of my mind. Painting and working through an emotion often go hand-in-hand for me. Usually, by the time I finish a painting, I have a much better understanding of why I started it in the first place.
Collect Bean: Do you have a saying that you live by?
Sarah Cotton: Not to be facetious, but I genuinely think that everything happens for a reason. If I don’t live by this, I’ll question everything I do and everything that happens to me. I’ve been practicing letting go lately, and it helps to remember that shitty things always come with a lesson, at the very least. Even if that lesson is letting go. Circling back to growth, I guess — change is growth is being alive.
