First Impressions

The artists explains how her imagination for fantasy was born

- Sarah Finnigan

Where did you grow up and how has this influenced your art?

I grew up in Texas, right on the edge of the Piney Woods near the border to several other ecosystems, all of them flat and, in the grand scheme of earth’s variety of landscapes, boring. But we lived in an area undergoing a lot of development, which meant hundreds of acres of woods and old logging trails that were no longer on private property and could be thoroughly explored.

The flat, monotonous landscape meant the threshold of what would inspire my imagination was low. The slightest sloping toward a river was downright mountainous to me, and a tunnel through thick yaupon holly could be hiding anything beyond my view. The thick trees made everything feel uncharted and ripe for exploration.

Now as an adult, my parents live out in Colorado, and even from just visiting them I feel myself become more accustomed to what used to take my breath away. In a way, I think it actually benefited me artistically to keep those beautiful places at arm’s length.

The artists explains how her imagination for fantasy was born

What, outside of art itself, has most influenced your artwork?

There was a game series in the 90s; the first one was called Myst but I especially loved the sequel Riven.

They placed you on abandoned islands and you had to puzzle out the narrative from what was left in the environment. They were all firstperson, and while empty places in a game can just feel unpopulated if done wrong, these felt eerie and lonely, like liminal spaces.

I've always appreciated the stories a place told and how it made me feel, and those games distilled that in a way that still has an impact. The settings were vaguely fantasy, but could very much be real, and toeing that line of the otherworldly and mundane. I try to find that feeling in much of my work.