SH I'm Sarah Honold. I am from San Diego, California, and my parents are from Mexicali, Baja California.
So I grew up on the border between San Diego, Tijuana and Mexicali.
AKZ How did going back and forth shape your sense of identity? And what did the cross-border childhood look like?
SH It was amazing, I feel like the luckiest kid ever to have had that experience. At the time I didn’t how weird it was to have grown up simultaneously in two countries. I’d go to my grandparents' house in Mexicali for the weekend, or just grocery shopping in Tijuana, and back to San Diego to cook dinner.
To get from San Diego to Mexicali you have to drive through the desert, so that was also a cool experience and that landscape is a big part of my work.
Growing up going from a third world to a first world country every week, especially with San Diego being such a pristine and beautiful place, and Tijuana being so chaotic and messy and dirty, and beautiful in its own way, is a huge contrast.
AKZ That's awesome. It’s also such good practice on adaptability and being sensitive to different environments—you are exposed to so many colors and textures, it’s so much stimulation.
SH Totally. Specially because I grew up in a very wealthy community in La Jolla, and then in contrast you go to Tijuana and are exposed to a way grungier art scene. I liked art since a very young age, so as a teenager I liked going to those grungier neighborhoods of Tijuana to see the work.
Being exposed to art in both very wealthy and underprivileged communities was awesome and very eye opening.
AKZ So from a young age you knew you wanted to be an artist.
SH Yes. My mom is an artist and sculptor, and she makes religious art. She's now super successful and raised us to always be making stuff. Anything we wanted, we kind of had to make with our hands or she made for us– all our Halloween costumes, our clothes, our birthday party invitations. Everything was handmade.
It really instilled in us that making stuff was important, and that was passed down to her through a lot of the women in her family. My grandmother was a big collage maker, and my great-grandmother was a big knitter. Making is just a big part of our family tree.
Virgen de la Esperanza Macarena, Susana Ramos
AKZ Because art was such a big part of your upbringing and the women in your family, did any part of you want to reject it or feel any pressure to pursue it?
SH No, I don't think so. I always really liked it. Before college, I took a semester off because I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I took an abstract painting class in London at Central St. Martins.
I always kind of did figurative work, but I loved looking at abstract painting with figurative elements, and I do think that that's what I kind of do now. So I went to London, did that class, and when I came back I just really had so much fun, but I lacked the confidence and support system to pursue it for college, and support systems are important when you're young.
But I went to school for interior design, which was helpful because I now understand space and composition in a way that maybe a lot of people don’t.
AKZ Did you always gravitate to painting as a medium?
SH I was always drawing from a young age, and then kind of got into painting as I got older.
AKZ How was the transition from interior design into full-time painting?
SH All through college I knew I didn't like my major. My first year was my favorite year of college because we did so much hand drafting, but after that I hated it. I went to school in San Diego so I Lived w its my parents and was still painting at home all the time. A lot of my mom's friends would come over and buy my paintings which was really encouraging.
I actually never graduated school. It was my last year, I hated it and COVID happened and I really wanted to move to New York so I told my parents I was going to take a year off, move to New York and just get a job and see if I could get into school here, and if it didn't work out, I would come back.
So I moved in with a friend and got a job at Ralph Lauren. One of my big dreams, and I think this has a lot to do with painting and composition, was to do window displays for stores. So, I thought maybe if I work in this store, I can somehow get to do the window displays there. And sure enough, I worked there for like six months and then got into the window display team and the creative team there.
I ended up working on the window display team at Ralph Lauren for like three and a half years, and then two years ago I quit and started painting full time.
  
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AKZ What prompted you to take that leap at the end of your time at RL?
SH I was doing it full time and it was a lot of hours. You do overnights and it’s sometimes all day and all night, so like 30 hour shifts. It’s a crazy and really amazing job, and the displays are incredible, but I had to stop painting because I was working so much. Suddenly an opportunity to share a studio came up and I was like maybe I can go on the weekends and start painting again.
It was a small space, but once I started using it I realized every time I was at work, I just wanted to be at the studio so bad. I wanted to be painting, and it just invigorated my love for painting.
So I quit with no job prospects, but knowing that I could freelance in what I was doing. And now it's been two years and I have a lot of freelance work and I have a studio, and am painting all the time.
AKZ That’s so energizing to hear. You were proactive and took a leap, and opportunities just present themselves and begin to align.
SH And I did really love my job, I just have another passion that I wanted more.
And career wise, I am kind of nowhere yet with painting, but I'm really enjoying the process.
I’m very fortunate I can do that without having to struggle on the side because I've put in the work of building the freelance business for myself.
AKZ Let’s talk about your process, what’s a day in the studio like?
SH My studio days are all different because my freelance schedule is all over the place, but sometimes I'll have like a week or two off and that'll be so nice because that just means I get to be in here every day.
I think because I had a regular nine to six, I work like nine to six usually, or like 11 to six or 11 to seven.
I don't like to stay late. I like to work to five or six and go home. But I'll come in and draw for an hour or two, and then I'll maybe look at some books or some images, and then get straight into painting.
I usually always have ideas, so if I’m ever in a rut it’ll happen once I'm painting, it won't happen before.
AKZ Do the drawings in the beginning of the day relate to what you’ll be painting?
SH Sometimes it does, and sometimes it's just to get ideas out of my system.
AKZ Where do the ideas come from?
SH A lot of what I draw is nature related. It's images and information and marks I see in nature, so I try to remember stuff and put it in a drawing or on paper, and that then goes into a painting.
AKZ When you’re in nature how do you collect information? Do you sketch or take photos?
SH I'll take photos, but also if I really like something I'll just remember it. I have a pretty good memory, and a lot of my paintings just happen.
AKZ To what extent is your painting process intuitive, vs. planned out?
SH I don't really look at references while I'm painting. I do look at books and some marks do come from looking at different artists or some other reference, but for the most part it's all just happening in the moment.
AKZ Did your abstract painting work in London plant the seed for your style today?
SH Yeah, that course really just invigorated something that I had since I was little. I always liked making messes, like really messy things that look really beautiful, and the course allowed me to do that in an artful way.
We have a house in Sonora in Mexico, in the mountains, and we grew up going there my whole life. It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere by a river, and it's 130 years old.
AKZ Wow.
SH There’s no TVs, no internet access, so we grew up going and playing with mud. I have memories playing by the river with mud and rocks and making a lot of mud pies. The rocks are colored stones, so we would go to these caves and just paint with the rocks all day on the walls.
I remember that as the ultimate expression of joy when I was little.
And I wasn't really painting anything or making anything specific, it was just using what we found in nature to play.
So in London, a lot of the assignments were to use what we found on the street or around the park to make sculptures and to paint with. It reminded me of when I was little and I've just carried that with me through my practice, and now I just want my paintings to look like mud.
AKZ I really love that. I had a professor in college who said when you're doing the things that hold the DNA of what you enjoyed doing at five years old, you know you're on the right path.
SH And it’s more fun that way. I've been using the leftover oil paint at the bottom of the cup which becomes like mud.
I leave it for days and days and days. And there's different colors now. I literally call it mud and I use it as a base or as color. I still use paint to get specific colors, but I like when it starts to look muddier.
AKZ Can you share a bit about the motifs in your work?
SH I don't really do specific shapes. The closest thing that I'll do is the shape is a flower or heart. I do hearts a lot just because they didn't really start out as hearts, but I really liked the shape. It actually came from all my walks Brooklyn, and observing the hearts on the fences.
AKZ When do you feel most inspired?
SH I don't know that I know yet. There are days that I'm good and there are days where it sucks, but mostly I do well. There are definitely days that I get nothing done and it's fine, you know? Or there are days where it sucks all day and then at the very end, something happens and then you're like, okay, why did that happen until the very end?
AKZ Can you tell me a bit about those objects? [on the shelf]
SH Yeah. I love antiques and old things.
So I just collect stuff and I bring it to my studio, and sometimes I look at it to use as a reference for a shape or colors.
And I guess the color palette is important to my work. A lot of my colors are reminiscent of the desert.
AKZ Do you ever go back to desert landscapes?
SH I mean, I traveled through the desert my whole life, so it’s just a constant memory– traveling in the car, seeing big rocks, a lot of browns and blacks and grays and reds, oranges, and then some greens. Someone just asked me to make a blue painting for them and I was like, I don't want to, I don’t really know how. And it’s interesting because I also did grow up by the ocean, but I just feel way more connected to the desert.
AKZ That feels really nostalgic as well.
SH Yes definitely. I always try to connect everything back to home because I miss it. I'm such a nostalgic person, everything I like is old. I wear old things; everything is just about nostalgia.
AKZ What do you hope people take away from your work?
SH I want people to feel like they're in nature somehow, or like they're playing in the mud, which is what I’m ultimately doing. I don't know if they're taking that away or if it's a feeling they're getting, but maybe they're just getting lost in feeling a little bit messy.
AKZ I love that. Thank you so much !
