Sara Stites

Sara Stites is an American artist born in Brooklyn, New York City in 1955.
Background and education
Her father, a designer, and her mother, a painter, exposed her to art at a young age, but she discovered her talent for drawing at the age of 14 at a summer camp for the arts. She recalls, "The camp had an atmosphere where life was about art and I realized that that was where I was most comfortable." She wanted to draw and found she could do it well and be recognized for her ability. Her interest turned into a passion and she went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University. After graduating, she moved to Boston and spent two years making etchings at the Experimental Etching Studio before moving back to New York City to attend Pratt Institute. After obtaining her Master of Fine Arts from Pratt, Stites spent time in Houston, where she enjoyed the freshly energized art scene, and later lived for eleven years in the Florida Keys. She currently lives and works in Miami (accurate as of March 2009).
Methodology
Stites begins her process of work with sketches in notebooks. Then, like a mental collage, she picks parts of each sketch as a basis for her paintings/drawings. "Art is like meditation, or even a sport where the concentration required to start and work out the piece feeds the need to keep working," she says. The work is a playful exploration of the relation between opposites: organic and non-organic, bizarre and beautiful, innocence and sexuality. She often uses hair to soften the edges of forms and eyes to allow the viewer a way of identifying with the work.
She relates to and quotes playwright William Inge's approach to his work "as a distillation of life rather than a narration of it." Always trying to break her own boundaries, Stites is not averse to making an unsuccessful piece; she believes that trying the uncertain is a way to new discoveries. She takes pride in reusing a part of a "failed" piece to start a new creation.

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