Sara Divya

I consider myself a “quiet” activist advocating for artistic community building and preservation of wildlife and ecosystems. For decades, my oil paintings celebrated spirituality through science and nature. From the microcosm to the macrocosm, I continue to explore patterns and selected cherished motifs from the finite to the infinite. I rearrange and revisit a cherished vocabulary.

My early oil paintings were celebrations of brightly colored imagined landscapes full of mountains, horses, and joie de vivre. For 40 years, my work has reflected my inner landscape though an alchemical amalgamation of texture, image and symbol. I am back to my roots painting beloved outdoor environments with wolves, horses, whales and sea life.

The animals I paint are content, loving and comfortable in their own skin and environments. As stand ins for me, maybe this is the reward from the challenges life presented. I came out the other side, vulnerable, but nimble; awake, but still willing to explore and dream.

As Studio Director at the Firehouse Art Collective in Berkeley, I nurture our artistic community. For my MFA and as an adjunct art professor I was pulled to Arizona, part my Yaqui and Mexican diaspora. A rock climber in remote habitats of my ancestors, I was home. Now I am home where I was born.

I raised two amazing and talented children as an economically disadvantaged single mother. I am resilient. I am a survivor. Heart Surgery led me back to my true calling as an artist climbing back to stability.