About me
Sarah Bellisario is a freelance and published illustrator, art teacher and lecturer, published academic researcher, creatrix and compulsive children’s book collector, based in Hertfordshire. She is passionate about using art to make a difference and is especially happy when creating murals for hospital spaces or workshopping her creative recovery resource the ‘Hummanis Deck‘ with groups or individuals in healing settings.
My art practice
Sarah’s illustration work uses a love of fine line, pattern and detail set off with bright colours and splashes of ink. She also explores ideas through ceramics, textiles and printmaking taking inspiration from her cultural heritage, travels and the esoteric. She is a lover of liminal spaces, flow states and magical consciousness; and themes such as mediumship, votives, witchcraft & cunning folk, folklore, healing and goddesses are often found in her work. Obsessive research, her personal esoteric practice and healing journeys are at the crux of all her making. Wherever possible she charges her art using elementals, and combines materials such as rust, nails, crystals, herbs, ashes, river water and written spells and intentions into her work, imbuing her artwork with layers of meaning and symbolism. In her studio she is a hoarder of objects and scrappy travel journals, collector of graphic novels and reader of many books.
Doctoral Research
Doctoral ‘Fine Art’ research student at UH, researching –
The Art of Healing – symbolic objects and transformational making: Making, creating and assembling in spiritual, creative and faith healing practice.
Sarah’s research heuristically explores how symbolic objects are understood and used in magical, spiritual and faith healing practices. It asks how contemporary British practitioners are reimagining and reinterpreting healing and ritual through syncretic assemblages and intercultural processes, as well as exploring the materiality and potency of the objects and artifacts used in these practices and the part they play in transformation and healing through symbolic engagement.
Sarah’s research has published in The Journal of Design History, The Peace Review journal and Epoch Magazine and her illustrations featured in Owen Davies 2023 book ‘Art of the Grimoire’.
Recent talks include the Therapeutic Landscapes Conference 2024 (Worcester), Magical Women’s conference 2024 (Birmingham) and Creative Research Conference (UH) 2024.
Qualifications:
BA(hons) Contemporary media practice – Westminster University
PGCE (FE) – Greenwich University
QTLS (Primary and Secondary Ed) – Institute for learning
MA Children’s book illustration – Cambridge School of Art
Sarah Bellisario 