Learn to draw and paint as you have always dreamed. Explore the pages below to get to a better understanding of the SARA experience. Read about our Methods, meet our faculty, discover our story, get familiar with Simrishamn and the wider surroundings and see what some alumni of SARA are doing today.

Working from Life and the Imagination

SARA values the tradition of working directly from life and experiencing the subject in person, whether it be another human being, a landscape or an object.

Painting is far more than just image making.  Painting is a physical record of a personal, human response to a subject. That response is never more pure, true and sincere than when it comes directly from life.  At SARA, our heartfelt desire is to foster, in our students, a love for working from life and a true appreciation for having that direct and deeper connection with one’s subject in the creative process. Working from life, unlike copying from photographs, has its challenges, such as lighting and subject matter that moves or changes over time, and converting three-dimensional subjects to two-dimensional images. The demanding process of learning to convert something three-dimensional to a two-dimensional surface and still have it look three-dimensional is a skill set that requires a very specific type of training and takes time to master. In an ever increasingly digital and AI based technological age, it has never been more important and meaningful to work from life and to exercise our own imagination rather than outsourcing it to Artificial Intelligence. SARA is dedicated to preserving, supporting and moving the traditional craft of hand-made drawing and painting forward in the 21st-century.