Sarah Winkler was born in Manchester, England and has lived in Malawi, Brunei, Iceland, Norway, the Italian Alps, and the Pacific Coast. Winkler’s studio is located at the summit of a 9,000 ft peak in the Colorado Rocky Mountains where she explores the geological story of landscape formation and even incorporates crushed minerals from the mountains around her. Winkler explains this is “to blend Earth’s ancestral pigments with the modern pigment and rekindle the ancient language between the environment and the creative depiction of it.”
Winkler studied Studio Art, Earth Science, and Creative Writing at William Paterson University before beginning her career as a collage artist and print graphic designer in the 1990s where she was influenced by the layered mockups, remixed music, and the multicultural art scene of Los Angeles. Today, Winkler sketches out her ideas in collage format using printed imagery that she has created physically or digitally, she then translates these sketches to scaled drawings, and then hand paints each layer to retain the cut paper collage aesthetic and to depict the strata of geological formations. “I mimic the geological processes of erosion and deposition in mountain building by applying acrylic paint onto wood panels, then removing it by a variety of means like sanding back through layer after layer to mimic glacial lines.”
Sarah Winkler’s big break as a fine artist came in 2010 with a large-scale, site-specific commission that joined an illustrious collection of artists at the Cosmopolitan Hotel of Las Vegas, Nevada. Her work has since been included in over 100 prominent US and international collections as well as galleries in the US and Canada. Winkler has been named by the curators of ARTSY as one of the top ‘Women Painters on the Rise’ and was curated into their 2022 digital billboard campaign 'Scenes of Summer' exhibition in NYC.
Since 2009, Winkler’s commissioned artworks have been placed in many prominent private, public and corporate collections including Chevron, San Francisco General Hospital, The Phoenician, Mountain Shadows Resort, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, The Cosmopolitan Hotel of Las Vegas, Viceroy, Ritz Carlton, Montage, Empire Pass, and Deer Valley Resort.
Features and reviews of her work have appeared in publications such as Scientific American, Dwell, Alpine Modern, Western Art and Architecture, Mountain Living, Luxe Interiors and Design, CREATE! and New American Paintings.
Recent Exhibitions
Solo Museum Show: 2026 - Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, Lindsborg, KS
Solo Show: 2023 - Edge of The Wild, Foster/White Gallery, Seattle, WA Group Show: 2023 - After The Gold Rush, Western Gallery. Austin, TX
Solo Show: 2023 - Peak Perspective, Vail International Gallery, Vail, CO
Stage Design: 2023 - Wizard of Oz. Dance Etoile Ballet, Broomfield Auditorium, CO
Group Show: 2022 - Scenes of Summer, ARTSY, New York, NY
Solo Show: 2022 - Uplifted, Gallery MAR, Park City, UT
Solo Show: 2022-Chasing Starlight, Eclipses & Rainbows, Visions W. Contemporary, Denver, CO
Solo Show: 2022 - Montana Landscape, Visions West Contemporary, Bozeman, MT
Solo Show: 2022 - Heart of The Mountain, Vail International Gallery, Vail, CO
Solo Show: 2021 - Mountain Glow, Gallery MAR, Park City, UT
Group Show: 2021 - Wildflowers, Gallery MAR, Park City, UT
Solo Show: 2021 - Dreams About The West, Owen Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
Solo Show: 2020 - All Mountain, Gallery MAR, Park City, UT
Solo Show: 2020 - Land of the Glacier, Visions West Contemporary, Denver, CO
Solo Show: 2020 - Reflections in Winter, MiXX Atelier, Telluride, CO