Sarah Gayle Carter

I used to design things. Custom rugs mostly. Also mirrors, lamps, plates, furniture, and even scarves. Those years trained my eye and taught me much about the detail and discipline required to develop design strong enough to translate through the many phases of development from sketch to final manufactured product. But now I paint. My designer eye responds to line, form, and certainly color. I look for the color and structure beneath the surface of things. I push the world I see into an abstracted, but recognizable play of color, texture and geometry - a fresh, fun, modern take on the classic genre of landscape painting. Though it’s fun to loosen up and play with paint, the designer in me is alive and well. I’m attracted to clean composition, color, pattern and texture. After years of the controlled specification required for product design, I enjoy the immediacy of paint on my brush, color at my finger tips, the smell, the feel, and the constant surprises that lead the way. Painting, for me, is a rewarding form of down and dirty magic. A Richmond native, I now live in Lexington, Virginia, painting these gorgeous, layered fields and old blue mountains.