Chris Schuler, The Independent, June 8th 2005
A NATURAL WORLD MADE MODERN

"Despite their intimate scale, Sarah Sparkes's tiny landscapes in oils (about four inches by seven) draw the viewer into a larger world. The forms of nature are rendered in a richly textured impasto: man-made structures are simply painted outlines, with the white-primed canvas left to show through. A power line dissects a wooded hillside; the shape of a car is incongruously cut out of a meadow. These artefacts appear like something imposed on the landscape, and yet also strangely transitory.
These haunting little paintings..."