When you were 16 years old, you started a photography business. Where did you get the desire to start such an entrepreneurial effort at such a young age?
I have always known that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. My first business was selling Duct Tape flower pens in fourth grade. I got called to the principal’s office and was told that I was not allowed to sell things on school property, which crushed that little dream. But ever since then, I just felt like nothing could bring me more joy than working for myself in a creative aspect.
As a 16-year-old, how were you finding clients?
It was mostly friends that were graduating friends, whose parents trusted me and maybe didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on senior portraits, who also did some trades. I got to go to Las Vegas by doing one of my friend’s senior portraits. Her mom works for Alaska, and there was a highland dance conference down there. Oh, I also did 10 years of competitive Highland dance; that was a big part of my upbringing.
Were your parents very supportive of your creative enterprises? What was that like growing up?
My mom has just been so supportive of me in every aspect. I can thank her for getting me into bugs. My first bedroom was all decorated with bugs. I don’t know why she just found some cute wallpaper and then ran with it. So I feel like she really planted that seed in me. She just always encouraged me, there’s nothing more powerful than an encouraging parent.
Incredible. This year, it seems like you’ve transitioned your business from photography to art. What inspired that change?
I have always dabbled in art. I had my oils and my acrylics; I just didn’t really have a theme or my own style. I spent a lot of years trying to cultivate that and find that. I knew I wanted to paint bugs, like I’ve known that for a long time, but the perfectionist in me was like, “Oh, I can’t paint them until I really know their anatomy, because I want them to be as scientific as possible.” Then I had the bicycle idea. And I thought, “Oh, I can’t paint bikes because the wheels have to be perfectly round.” And one night, I was like, “Gosh, darn it, I just need to paint a cricket riding a bicycle right now.”
I stopped everything; it was like 10 p.m., and I stayed up until I finished this cricket. I wrote in my journal that night that this was going to be something good. I just knew from that point on. I had my style, I had my subject, I had my medium, and I knew what to do. It just all came together for me at that moment.
Were there any trials and tribulations while developing your style? Any false starts? Or any times where you tried transitioning to art before?
Yeah, in high school, I had a similar little muse. They were called my Spunky Birds, and they started with just a bunch of different cartoon-looking bird characters. I ran with that for a while. You know, Christmas gifts and birthday gifts were always a bird painting of mine. That was nice, but after a while, it definitely felt juvenile and a little too childish for me. I knew that I wanted to experiment more with fine art, so I took some drawing classes. I definitely feel like I’ve tried a lot of different things, and there’s always more that I want to try. You know, I don’t have a lot of experience in printmaking or a lot of different mediums. But when I found gouache, I knew that gouache was the medium for me.
Gouache?
Yes, it’s in between watercolor and acrylic. You can dilute it like watercolor, or you can layer it really thick like acrylic. I just love it! I wish we’d played with gouache in, like, first grade because it’s just a medium that anyone can get into and feel confident with really quickly.
I had no idea this even existed.
It took me a long time to buy it. I knew I wanted to paint with gouache, and I kept holding off and holding off. I was telling myself that I wouldn’t buy more art supplies. That was until my 24th birthday in December. I got the gouache. And then I painted my first cricket in January.
Amazing. Your paintings are known for being “Bugs on Bikes” but I know you are passionate about all forms of alternate transportation. Where did this love for alternate transportation come from, and how did you decide to combine your passions?
I started getting into alternative transportation around the same time that I painted my first bug. I found some YouTube channels like Not Just Bikes and a podcast called The War on Cars. They were just about thinking of our cities differently. I could never really pinpoint what it was about Spokane that made it really hard to live here as a kid. You can’t get anywhere without a car. You can’t ride a bike safely around most of the city, and the bus service has been somewhat unreliable and was not super rapid for most of my life. It’s changing now, thankfully. But I realized, like, this is an issue that a lot of American cities have.
I realized one day that bikes are being squashed by society the same way that bugs get squashed by society. I started drawing those parallels between those and just realized that these are two really important things that we need to pay attention to. We’re going to keep driving monster trucks around and killing thousands of people every year with cars and not do anything about it. I just thought that if I put a cheeky little spin on it, it might open people’s minds a little bit, and so far, that’s definitely been happening. My cheesy tagline is, “I want to take the creep out of creepy crawlies and put micromobility in a new perspective.”
If somebody was at the very beginning of their creative journey, what is something that you would tell them?
I would definitely say to just stick with it and go for it. That’s the best advice I could give. Because for a long time, I really held back. I didn’t want to show people my art. I knew it wasn’t there yet. It wasn’t good enough for me yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough for other people. What I have learned, which is still bizarre to me, is that people want to support you. Even if you’re not ready to support yourself, other people can and will. And that’s been really eye-opening to me.
When did you realize that change?
It’s been hard to accept all the love and support that I’m getting because it’s something I’m not used to. I feel like I’ve been a very private person. With my photography business. I’ve tried to be very professional and always felt like there were two versions of me. And being an artist is being my truest self. Showing that version of me to the world in the past few months has been scary, but it’s also been a big sigh of relief.
What is the best way someone can support what you do?
I would love to see people at local markets that I’ll be attending. But other than that, I have an Instagram (@sarahrose.artworks) and website (sarahroseartworks.com) where you can find a bug that speaks to you.
*This interview was originally featured in the winter/spring 2024 edition of Echo Chamber Magazine