Sarah Amos was born in London, England and grew up in the countryside in Wales. On moving to Vancouver when in her teens, she fell in with the artists who had just founded The Western Front. In particular she studied drawing with Eric Metcalfe and was associated with Michael Morris and Robert Young. In her alter ego as Countess Bonavitch she participated in performance art activities there. While in Vancouver, she also received a B.A. degree from the University of British Columbia.
Amos’s life changed in 1981 when she flew to Bangkok to join her future husband, artist Robert Amos. Together they travelled in Thailand and in Japan, painting and drawing and participating in art activities. Sarah joined Art House of Kobe, Japan at their opening performance at Portopia, the new man-made island port of Osaka. After further travel they were married in Britain later that year. Since then Sarah and Robert Amos have devoted themselves to art and writing.
During the 1980’s Amos exhibited her paintings at Stones Gallery, North Park Gallery, the Stephen Lowe Gallery, and Fran Willis Gallery in Victoria, Sandstone Studios on Gabriola Island and many others. She was seen in the Women Wise Festival at Queenswood House, for which she designed the logo. There were many others exhibits including the Moss Street Paint-In and the Sooke Fine Arts exhibition as well as solo exhibitions of her paintings at Emily Carr House (2008) and at the gallery at Cedar Hill Recreation Centre (2007). Besides painting, in 2001 Amos originated and developed the Fairfield Artists Studio Tour, and five years later passed the direction of the tour to the Fairfield Community Association. In 2006 she once again took up her role as performance artist, hosting a tea party which was videotaped for the World Tea Party, Bryan Mulvihill’s project at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. In 2009 Fairfield streets were hung with banners of her winning design.
Sarah’s Tea Time, a 64-page full colour book, was published by TouchWood Editions of Victoria in 2008. Launched with a show of her original paintings for the book at Emily Carr House, this is a collection of her recipes and pictures of afternoon tea. Allison Vail of the Ladysmith Chronicle called it “deliciously old fashioned – a cuter book I’ve rarely seen.”
The year 2010 was highly productive for Amos. With producer and director Michael Ostroff, Sarah created a number of copies of Emily Carr's paintings on camera and was seen as "the hand of Emily Carr" in the full-length feature film Winds of Heaven, distributed by the National Film Board. Her painting Roadside Poppies was used by Rogers Chocolates on tins both large and small and became a best-seller for them. Subsequently she was a featured performer, painting in the Crystal Ballroom at the Empress Hotel during Roger's 125 anniversary event. A solo showing of her paintings was presented for six months in the public areas of the Victoria International Airport. Her book, Sarah's Tea Time, was featured in the Victoria Tea Festival in the Crystal Gardens. She was also instrumental in planning the Art Jam festival, a three-week exchange with nine Japanese artists in Victoria and Ladysmith.
In 2011, in addition to her ongoing participation in the Fairfield Artists Studio Tour and her contribution of illustrations for the cover of the Moss Rock Gazette, Sarah Amos participated in the Humboldt Valley Art Festival. For eight months of 2012-2013 her paintings graced the Gold Room, the special private lounge of the Fairmont Empress Hotel. Throughout this time she also continued her activities with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria's Art Sales and Rental program, which she has been a part of since 1982.
Later in 2011, Amos took a leave of absence from her public career to design and supervise the construction of a her new home. This is the second house she has seen to completion in twenty years and it provides splendid studio and exhibit space for herself and her husband, artist Robert Amos (www.robertamos.com). While this project was underway Amos lived for a year in an apartment where the spectacular views were an inspiration for a new series of landscapes.
With a healthy respect for tradition, Amos’s work is based on careful draughtsmanship and meticulous brushwork. Her paintings blossom with a joyful love of colour. Her images were in the past predominantly drawn from close to home, including subjects from her garden, the food she loves to cook and the meaningful objects in her home. More recently, her focus has become the elements of the landscape - fields of flowers, fields in Saanich, glacial lakes, eroded hillsides and alpine meadows and landscapes featuring the skies above Oak Bay. At the moment she is completing a large view of Moraine Lake in the Rockies.
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