Sara Steele

Sara Steele is a Philadelphia-based American watercolorist, best known for florals and landscapes as well as more abstract works.
Early life
Steele describes herself as "wild about color" from an early age. Steele considers her sense of color as a gift, and describes herself as a colorist.
Watercolors
Steele's primary medium is watercolor, and her paintings fluctuate between representational and abstract work. Her work has received considerable media notice in the metropolitan Philadelphia area. As her career evolved, Steele moved from smaller flower studies described as "demure" to large-scale work that has been described as "bold." A larger exhibit of this work was exhibited at the inauguration of the new PECO building in Philadelphia.
Steele has exhibited her work in over sixty solo shows and many more invitational, juried, and group shows. She frequently works on commission. She has been exhibited at Ursinus College's Phillip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art outside Philadelphia. In commenting on this show, one Philadelphia art critic described Steele's style as, not so much art for its own sake, but "art that believes it should be directly rooted in the social and political realities around it." A mid-career survey featured eighty of her pieces.
Steele has contributed to several public art projects. In 2005, the City of Philadelphia commissioned Steele to participate in the City of Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program. She created a work titled "Bioluminescence" which is
an abstraction of underwater forms in the Caribbean and was inspired by Steele's visit there. In 2006, as part of a fundraiser for the Philadelphia Zoo, Steele painted an eleven-foot tall cast resin sculpture of an elephant. The elephant was sold to private buyers at auction, but it has been displayed in a way that can be seen by the public. Before it was moved, it was a frequent stop for visitors to Mount Airy.
Steele considers her work influenced by Chinese medicine and philosophy. In her book, In Bloom: The Floral Art of Sara Steele, she cites the I Ching references to "the natural law of movement along the path of least resistance" which she sees in the blossoming of a gladiolus. Sara Steele: Blueprints For Paradise, published in 2005 in conjunction with the Berman exhibition, includes landscapes, still lives, and abstractions illustrating the breadth of her work. In Bloom: The Floral Art of Sara Steele, published in 1995, showcases floral paintings. In Bloom: The Floral Art of Sara Steele was published by Cedco Publishing Company in San Rafael, California and Sara Steele: Blueprints For Paradise was published by Tide-mark Press, Ltd. in Windsor, Connecticut. She also publishes an annual full-color illustrated calendar which features her work.
Public Commissions
* 1990 Endangered Orchids, Painting Series, commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation Headquarters, Vienna, VA.
Activism
Throughout her career, Steele has made in-kind contributions to scores of charitable organizations, many of which advocate for women. With funding from the Philadelphia Foundation, she has given multiple workshops for women who have experienced personal violence. Her work with the Clothesline Project has been exhibited in Courtyard and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She has also supported the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the National Clearinghouse in Defense of Battered Women, MANNA, Action AIDS, the Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, SANE/Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and Women Against Abuse. Steele frequently cites the power of art to heal. In 1997, with the help of a grant, she became the first Artist-in-Residency at Friends Hospital, a private non-profit psychiatric hospital.
Awards
Steele is the winner of several awards including the Peace and Freedom Award from Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Distinguished Alumna Award granted by the Citizens' Committee on Public Education in Philadelphia, and the Brandt F. Steele Aesthetic Award for Promotion of Peace and Prevention of Violence awarded by the Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.<ref name=bio />

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