Sarah Cunningham: The Crystal Forest in The Imagined Landscapes

Sarah Cunningham Artist Life

Sarah Cunningham was born in Nottingham in 1993 and resided and worked in London. She earned her BFA from Loughborough University, where she mostly created collages. Cunningham worked as a van driver for several years after graduating in 2015. In 2018, she was invited to work with the Indigenous Guna communities in Panama, being selected for a research residency by the non-profit La Wayaka Current.

In 2022, she graduated with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art. The same year, she had her first solo performance at New York’s Almine Rech, titled ‘In Its Daybreak, Rising.’ Sarah Cunningham’s artist portfolio has been featured at Aspen, Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, and Vancouver. In 2019, she received the Djanogly Art Award and the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award. Her pieces can be found in the Al Thani Collection in Qatar and the Sprengel Family Collection in Germany. 

Sarah Cunningham Artist Style

Sarah Cunningham used her imagined wildernesses and flowing forest scapes to inquire about the vitality of living. Layering radiating colour, line, and light, she created kaleidoscopic abstract environments. Her spatial structures and gestural marks led to hidden worlds and pastures. Each painting—part abstract experimentation, part spiritual journey—represents the intuitive and unsaid relationship between nature and humanity.

Sarah Cunningham’s canopied compositions appear to be pulled and carved from each canvas, seeming to be in perpetual flux. She utilised vivid, expressive mark-making to adopt and dissolve literary, art historical, and personal references. Her improvised approach to materials influenced the expressionistic and crystalline artwork. Her nocturnal practice of working through the night produced works that momentarily exist in both darkness and dawn.

Cunningham’s oddly hypnotic landscapes, which are infused with psychological tension and the entangled chaos of nature, are easy to get sucked into. She was mesmerised by the oil pigment’s fluidity and autonomy, making it her chosen medium years later. She later opened a studio at the artist-run Backlit Gallery. Her primary sources of inspiration included poems, plants, shells, found images, and photographs.

By offering a glimpse into a familiar yet enigmatic world, Sarah Cunningham’s artwork invites viewers to reflect on the relationship between the natural world and the human psyche. Her paintings use poetic and perceptive techniques to portray psychological landscapes.

Sarah Cunningham’s ‘The Crystal Forest’

In 2023, she conducted a solo show at Lisson Gallery titled, ‘The Crystal Forest.’ In it, she branched out to depict the lush tropical rainforests of Panama and the ancient Sherwood Forest of Nottingham. ‘The Crystal Forest,’ blended magical woodlands in her imagination. They powerfully demonstrated the relationship between the world’s biomes and ecosystems. The forest appears as a recurring theme in Sarah Cunningham’s artist’ oeuvre, acting as a metaphor and a conceptual framework that mirrors our lives in the modern social environment.

‘The Crystal Forest’ was held in the summer. Her next solo was held at Lisson Gallery’s Los Angeles location, titled ‘Flight Paths,’ which examined body and aerial movements. This show was held in the fall of 2023.

Sarah Cunningham’s Untimely Death

Sara Cunningham artist went missing on 2 November 2024 following a weekend night out. Her body was found at the tracks of the Chalk Farm Underground station in Camden borough in the early morning of 4 November 2024. Despite being unexpected, her death is not being viewed as suspicious. She was 31 at the time of her passing. Sarah Cunningham is survived by her brother Anthony Cunningham and parents Eddie and Sue Cunningham.

Image Courtesy – Cultured Magazine

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