Artist Biography
Sarah Rae Redrup creates tactile-inspired digital illustrations that blend scanned ephemera, blue ballpoint sketches, and collage to explore memory, vulnerability, and time. Based on the Isle of Wight, her work excavates overlooked histories and transforms geographical spaces into narrative—capturing moments where past and present, tangible and digital, remembering and forgetting intersect.
Sarah’s artistic practice centres on creating portraits and compositions that appear deceptively tangible—digital pieces crafted to emulate the texture and depth of physical media. By scanning everyday ephemera—tickets, receipts, photographs—and layering them with delicate illustrations, she transforms the ordinary into repositories of memory and emotion.
What distinguishes Sarah's work is a deliberate embrace of vulnerability in both subject and technique. Portraits often remain intentionally unfinished, with detailed areas that fade into ghostly suggestion, mirroring how memories themselves exist on a spectrum from vivid to barely perceptible. This technique creates tension between presence and absence, completeness and the unresolved.
Throughout her portfolio runs a consistent exploration of softness—both in visual texture and emotional resonance. Her color palette tends toward muted tones punctuated by moments of unexpected vibrancy, creating a visual language that speaks to the way nostalgia functions: mostly quiet with sudden bursts of emotional intensity.
Time appears as both subject and method in her work. The layering process itself becomes a meditation on how experiences accumulate and transform one another, while text fragments—often borrowed from meaningful songs or personal observations—serve as emotional anchors throughout the compositions.
Sarah's practice extends beyond digital collage into multiple disciplines. In her project "Island Women Wondering Why," she created a collage zine mapping the true stories of women on the Isle of Wight, weaving together personal narratives with geography to create a feminist cartography of place and experience. Her versatility as an artist also encompasses installations, creative writing, and 35mm photography, allowing her to approach her core themes through various mediums.
Her most recent body of work combines journal-like digital collages with double-exposure photography, creating a dialogue between different approaches to memory-making and documentation. Both projects examine how the past reverberates into the present, and how tenderness can be simultaneously craved and resisted.
Currently based on the Isle of Wight, Sarah draws inspiration from the liminality of island living—the sense of being simultaneously connected to and separate from the mainland—which informs her ongoing exploration of emotional states that exist at the threshold between expression and withholding. She also shares her practice through workshops on collaging, inviting others to explore the intersection of memory, materiality and personal narrative through hands-on creation.
Exhibitions & Commissions
2023 - Style of Wight Magazine, Full Cover Wrap, Issue 83
2023 - Inspirational Women Artists, A Space Arts, Group Exhibition
2023 - Just the Place, Quay Arts, Group Exhibition
2022 - Monkton Arts Prize Exhibition, Monkton Arts, Group Exhibition
2022 - Island Women Wondering Why, Zine, Self-Published
2021 - The Online Zine, Contributor, Self-published
2020 - I Decide, Zine, Self Published
2019 - The Women’s Bureau of Rebellion, Curator & Exhibitor, Ventnor Fringe Festival
2017 - Identity by Oluwaseun Matiluko, commissioned to Illustrate poetry book
2017 - Universial Credit, Editorial Commission, The Bristol Cable
2016 - Mind Your Head, Group Exhibition, Bristol Student Union
2014 - The Bristol Guide to Local Living, Zine, Bristol Sustainability Hub
2011 - Group Show, Seaview Art Gallery
Awards & Grants
2022 - Developing Your Creative Practice, Arts Council England
2021- Pitch on a Page Award, Falmouth University
2020 - Mike Howley Trust Grant
2018 - Mike Howley Trust Grant
Education & Experience
2023 - Workshop Facilitator, Freelance
2022 - Oral History Interviewer, Island Railway Voices, Volunteer
2019 to 2021 - MA Illustration, Falmouth University (Merit)
2019 - Intern, Ventnor Exchange, Funded Internship
2018 - Arts Trail Guide, Ventnor Fringe Festival, Volunteer
2018 - Free Fringe Coordinator, Ventnor Fringe Festival, Volunteer
2016 - Graphic Designer & Social Media Marketing Intern, Transform Drug Policy Think Tank, Funded Internship
2014 - Graphic Design Intern, Bristol Sustainability Hub, Unpaid Internship
2012 to 2015 - BSc Politics & Philosophy, University of Bristol (2:1)