Sarah Ria is inspired by the tension between stillness and vitality  those fleeting moments when life appears suspended, yet full of energy. Her work seeks to capture and evoke emotion, atmosphere and a sense of something just beyond what is visible. Working across photography, painting and small-scale sculpture, there is often a sense of drama and mystery in Ria's practice; an attempt to move beyond representation and towards something more visceral and transcendent.

Sarah Ria graduated from Wimbledon School of Art in Film Design and has built a career as a Production Designer working across film and television. Her professional practice involves imagining and constructing worlds for scripts, balancing creative ideas with the practical realities of budgets, locations and production constraints. Painting offers a different kind of freedom: a space in which she can move beyond the demands of narrative and capture the essence, atmosphere and emotional undercurrent of an imagined or observed moment.

“I look for the raw and the wild in people and places. There is often a kind of magic when you encounter it, and if you can capture it  and then recapture that feeling through painting it feels as though you are honouring the integrity of life.”

Ria is drawn to the stories held within people and places: gestures, colour, texture, memory and the energy that exists beneath the surface. While film and television narratives guide an audience through a particular story, painting allows the viewer greater freedom to lose themselves in their own interpretations, memories and imaginings.

Her work is interested in this openness  in images that can transcend fixed narratives, beliefs or expectations and speak instead through the many nuances of human experience. Each work offers a space for a different perspective: one in which the viewer is invited not simply to look, but to feel, remember and find their own story within the image.