SARA CONCA
ARTIST
EMAIL: SaraConca@me.com
Sara Conca is an American contemporary abstract artist whose mixed media paintings can be found in museums, public installations, hotel lobbies, celebrity homes, and private collections around the world. By layering natural materials and textures, Conca creates immersive, constantly renewing landscapes that celebrate light, movement, and healing.
Conca's signature painting style is unique: while most painters build their images from background to foreground, she paints in reverse on the back of a clear sheet of acrylic, building the image from foreground to background—letting intuition guide her strokes. To reach the meditative mindset required for this technique, Conca often paints en plein aire, gathering inspiration from the lushness of pastoral Florida. When painting, Conca incorporates unconventional materials—raw silver dust, 18k gold leafing, raw color pigments, mica flakes, natural crystals, and even crushed BB pellets.
Through this unique technique and material, Conca is able to craft a metallic "flecked texture" that has an exceptionally dynamic radiance. Each painting's appearance changes significantly according to the surrounding light, the movement and position of its viewer, and other environmental factors. This makes for an ever-evolving and highly individual viewing experience.
In Conca's words:
"My work is intended to instantaneously immerse the viewer into the visual and emotional energies that I have devoted to each piece. Depending on one's ability and willingness to be guided by the senses, these paintings can lead one away from the mind and into an alternate and self-made reality filled with color and freedom. My new series features blues. I love working with this color because it changes in the light by manipulating the textures and layering with silver dust or gold, affording each piece continuous movement and energy from the reflecting and refracting light."
Conca's dynamic art reflects her varied background. Descended from late-Baroque Italian painter Sebastiano Conca—whose work is on permanent exhibition at the Louvre and the Getty—Conca showed artistic talent early on. At 17, she was accepted at the Ateliers d’Art de St. Maur des Fossés in Paris, France. There, she received critical acclaim for her sculpture and drew inspiration from the movement and energy of the city's art scene. As her artwork progressed and matured, she was accepted as an assistant of the critically lauded artist Purvis Young.
After Paris, Conca took up both painting and modeling, turning both paths into remarkable careers. She was able to fully support herself as a painter in Manhattan while working closely with fashion icons such as Ralph Lauren.
"Modeling with Ralph Lauren was instrumental in training my eye," Conca states. "Fashion and fine art are both about beauty and balance." Her nearly 20 years in New York City, as well as her extensive travels, gave her a further appreciation for ever-changing environments and heavily influenced her style.
Now, Conca has returned to her Florida roots. She looks to the natural, aquatic landscape of her pastoral home for inspiration for her current and future work.
Link reference to Sebastiano Conca:
