Sarah Jane Szikora @ Royal Worcester
Sarah Jane Szikora was born in county Durham, England, in 1971. Sarah was encouraged from a young age to pursue her interest in drawing which led to a course in art and design at Harrogate College. Illustration at Cleveland College of Art followed from where she developed a love of drawing the human form.
Local dance studios created a melting pot of material from which a collection of drawings were created and developed into her fat and skinny ladies.
Sarah's influences include the wonderful and amusing drawings of Thomas Rowlanson and many other important artists. "I love humour and draw a lot of inspiration from funny books, films and television."
Her aim is most definitely not to ridicule but promote the idea of a society that likes itself and where her people, the ladies especially are confident positive characters, comfortable with their bodies.
Sarah is very serious about her work, but most of all she wants
to make people smile .She has maintained a lifelong interest in simple drawing,
and always enjoyed the life class most. From Harrogate Sarah went on to
study illustration at Cleveland College of Art. The same interest in studying
the human form continued and led to the development of the extreme figures
in her work. She left Cleveland, taking with her a HND with distinction
and a handful of paintings, but she didn't yet know how to turn her studies
into a job, so the painting went on the backburner. In 1991 she set up a
business called 'Wild Thing' hand making papier-maché models, ranging from
twisted newspaper sheep to 7-foot giraffes.
These were sold from a shop in York, and kept her busy for a couple of years until she decided to display the work she had left college with. The 'big girls with attitude' sold surprisingly quickly and encouraged her to concentrate on painting instead as her chosen career. Since then she has been painting non-stop. Along the way her partner took responsibility for publishing her work as greetings cards until she found an agent who in turn introduced her to Washington Green and the Halcyon Gallery in 1995. She has since had my work published as limited edition prints, greetings cards and jigsaws as well as having various exhibitions over the last 4 years.
In 2006 Sarah Jane Szikora joined forces with Royal Worcester to produce a range of giftware that captured her own brand of humour proving to be extremely popular with Royal Worcester customers.
Sarah Jane Szikora @ Royal WorcesterThe Sarah Jane Szikora Collection features a selection of her characterful and colourful, eye-catching paintings across a range of quality ceramic gift items.
The range includes espresso cups and saucers, mugs, platters, square bowl and vases. Each design is titled and includes Conga, Dare To Be Different, Dare To Be Different Together, Hell Hath No Fury, Fly Away, Tug of War, Bus Stop, Size Matters, Let it Rain, Born Free, Its Good But is it Art?, Revolution, Smooching and Super Models.
