Contemporary artist Sara Pope is best known for her glossy, colourful, pop paintings of lips. Taking inspiration from a successful career in the fashion industry as a shoe designer as well as her work in magazines as a designer and art director, Sara aims to capture the sensuality, beauty and power conveyed by the lips and mouth. Interested in notions of beauty, communication, and the concept of perfection, Sara uses the perspective of her commercial experience to explore these themes.

The starting point is a makeup brush and a lipstick. She paints her subjects’ lips, then, using specific techniques of makeup and lighting, she begins the process of capturing her subjects’ unique expression, through an extensive photographic study. These shots provide the foundation from which Sara draws inspiration to start her painting. The painting process involves several layers of thin oil-diluted paint being overlaid, blending and smoothing the colours extensively at every stage, sometimes also mixing lipstick into the paint. Emulating the stylistic slickness of advertising, the result is glossy, perfect and irresistible.

Sara’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and art fairs across London and internationally, including The Saatchi Gallery, London, Next Street Gallery, Paris, The London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy of Arts and SCOPE Miami. Her work is regularly sold at Bonhams Auction House, and she has received commissions for lip portraits from several prominent figures including the Princess of Liechtenstein and Benson Wilson from the English National Opera. Sara holds the distinction of being the first British female artist in over seven decades to have her artwork accepted into the Vatican collection.