Sara Dudman

Sara studied Fine Art at Loughborough College of Art and Design and gained her Masters at De Montfort University. She exhibits extensively including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, The National Open Art Prize and The Jerwood Drawing Prize as well as sitting on the judging panel for national art awards and exhibitions.

Sara is a visual artist, using paint, drawing and film. Best described as a ‘SEEKER | SHARER’, her practice embraces collaborative field research in the form of ‘nomadic-sporadic’ walks, wild pigment foraging, paint-making, curating, devising and leading locality-based artistic projects, creating participatory encounters and studio-based activity. She works with interdisciplinary partners to reinterpret the interwoven ecological relationships within the natural environment.
Sara’s affinity for ‘the rural’ has been a lifelong affair and the enduring locus of her artistic practice which continually interrogates her  role and function as a rural artist.

Sara works alone and with arts, heritage, conservation and wildlife organisations as artist-in-residence, curator and project leader. Her practice constantly evolves through partnerships – with human and more-than-human collaborators. 

She is a ‘hunter-gatherer’, leading social walks to forage for raw materials with which to make paints and pastels and to search out the myriad of stories which every footstep reveals.

Her work stems from the urgent need to better understand and review our relationship with the world and its myriad of inhabitants with their interwoven relationships.
Sara lives adjacent to the National Landscape boundary in the Blackdown Hills in Somerset, deeply acquainted with sheep-farmers and the richness of the rural community and industry. She is a hiker. The understanding of terrain gathered through footsteps and physical connection with the ground anchors and informs her practice. She has worked on a sequence of interdisciplinary and collaborative, coastal and landscape-based projects across the South West of England over the past 4 years, in partnership with communities and conservation, wildlife and heritage organisations. Since early 2020, the locus of her practice has shifted from remote and wild residencies, to a passionate reacquaintance with her own locality in South West England. 

She is currently interrogating definitions and relationships with ‘beauty’ in relation to the natural environment, in partnership with her geologist collaborator, Steps-in-Stone. Questions arising from ‘protected’ and ‘unprotected landscapes’ and environments open discussions about our society’s relationship with natural environments, empathy and care.

Sara co-founded the regional artist development programme called Somerset Reacquainted (2020 – 2024) and continues to direct its evolution. She was Artist-in-Residence with the Chase and Chalke Landscape Partnership Scheme (2022), leading ‘UNEARTHING’. She worked with Somerset Wildlife Trust, South West Heritage Trust and Steps-in-Stone to create FLOW, exploring the waterways of the Somerset Levels (2023).

Sara is a Royal West of England Academician, contributing to research forums including Carbon – Borders – Voices and PLaCE International and she is represented by Joanna Bryant Projects.

Website: www.saradudman.com