Self Portrait Painting

Sarah Kirk Parcell is a figurative painter. Parcell works primarily with oils on large-scale canvases, and uses broad and spontaneous brush strokes to go beyond the objective representation of her human subjects. Her paintings are based on emotionally inspiring situations of human connection: nostalgia, vulnerability, joy, and suffering. Combined with subtle details of odd or eccentric elements, the resulting works are whimsical, sensational, and open to interpretation. Sarah Kirk Parcell was born, raised, and currently living in Roanoke, Virginia. Parcell was born into a family of creatives and artisans. Her mother nurtured her self-expression from a young age, resulting in a developed rapport between the abstract and the visual representation. Parcell has a deep fascination with identity, expression, and language which inspired her artistic focus and medium of choice. After living briefly in Richmond, Virginia, Sarah moved back to Roanoke to become a career artist. Sarah worked for the Taubman Museum of Art and practiced for years out of a notable studio space in the heart of Downtown Roanoke, but then struck out to found her own studio and gallery located in the building of a once-was bank. This new space gives Sarah the ability to paint on larger scales, work through the early morning hours, and provides the solitude to delve into the ‘meditative state’ in which she likes to create.