About
My work explores the relationship between grace and courage by activating a place in your heart that desires to go on a deep, inward, and transformative healing journey 🌙
My artwork is imbued with the healing frequencies of my own decade long journey of descent and return from eating disorders, sexual trauma, relationship abuse, body dysmorphia, addiction, medication, detoxing, recovery, thriving and advocacy 🌟
🔥The Phoenix Rising energy codes ❤️🔥
I began my public Creative Journey on social media in 2016 as a testimony to the Power of the Human Spirit and all of my content contains the codes of breaking free from the chains of your past ⛓ to step into your full power 🦋
✨ How to wield your dark Shadow archetype energy into glistening diamond love frequencies 💎
I have been painting since the year 2000 at age 16, which is when I knew in my heart I truly wanted to become a professional painter...but it felt like a pipe dream🧚♀️
My background is in Graphic Design, including video editing + production, Art Therapy & Shamanic Healing 🪶
I graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors from the University of Memphis with a Bachelor of Fine Art degree and a concentration in Graphic Design in 2006. I spent the summer studying Psychopathology and the Philosophy of Morality in the Age of Terror in England through Christian Brothers University and then went on to graduate school at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Conneticut where I studied Art Therapy for 3 semesters before dropping out ❤️
During my time in graduate school, I was an after school volunteer tutor for Refugee and immigrant children, an Art Therapy intern at an outpatient Chemical Dependency Program, and an Art Recreation Volunteer on the ICU Neuroscience floor at Yale-New Haven Hospital ❤️
My program was rooted in Freudian and Jungian Psychology which is the study of the unconscious mind ❤️
It was here where I was taught how to dive deep into my unconscious mind and interpret universal symbolism in my abstract work ❤️
These experiences developed a deep place in me for holding space for others who are struggling as well as witnessing how the creative proesss heals ❤️
I started intuitively experimenting with releasing my emotions through watercoloring tendril-like DNA strand “strings” in 2006 as a self soothing practice 🧬
By the 2010’s I was weaving these shapes into the hair of my feminine figure paintings. I learned how to express and evoke intense emotion with hair…as it can feel like the wind streaming through and around you 🌬
Whimsical threads of hair can make you feel hopefully buoyant just as languid strands can be a visual for the grief healing process 🪷
The power of the wind is invisible until it blows through something…and when you see it, you can sense both delicateness and resilience 💐
Years ago, I started running in the forest nearby to epic symphonic battle music. As my mind worked through many things, I began to imagine warrior angels lending me their strength especially by the time the Pandemic hit 🌳
This active meditation was the seed of many of my paintings. I knew they would be graceful, and shimmer —but they would also be unapologetically fierce 🔥
I wanted them to feel refined but unafraid to feel raw all at once because that is the power of embracing your truth no matter how ugly it may be and learning how to spin it into gold that is medicine for others to experience ☀️
I am drawn to the inward process of creating figurative art to express emotions my body did not feel safe expressing in real life for many years 💫
My mind, my heart, my entire Soul…were all afraid to share. For a very long time 🍃
To break free from that, and learn to live in my body as mine, whole and complete, worthy and loved is what my artwork is truly about 🐚
I love to write too, this is one of my favorites...my Mom called these little blurbs my "prose":
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The deepest of waters
Know how to drown you
The highest of mountains
Know how to awaken you
The softest of fields
Know how to comfort you
The hottest of bonfires
Know how to ignite you
The gentlest breezes
Know how to sweeten you
But it’s the scenery inside you
That knows how to free you
Written in 2021
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I am heavily influenced by the way color, texture, and composition evoke emotions, and often ones we may not have a name for 💕
I am a wife and mother of two in the greater Cleveland, Ohio area. I was born in 1984 (Taurus ☀️, Libra 🌙 Cancer ⬆️), grew up outside Memphis, Tennessee and I have also lived in Louisiana, Connecticut, and Chicago 🌷
Thank you for your interest in my work and creative journey, it means the world to me 🌻
I invite you to follow my ever expanding creative + healing journey @sarahdalesandro on all platforms ❤️🔥
A portion of sales are donated to Women for Women International 🌙
Always,
Sarah 🌹