Moon Tree. Oil on canvas board.
Sarah Chalkie Cloonan is an artist who finds inspiration in everyday objects and blurs the boundaries between art, the academic, and the everyday. Her work often features trees, which represent the maternal, and she is interested in exploring how the arts can help us flourish and learn.
Paintings of the outdoors hung on a wall bring the outside in. Moon trees, although probably not their real name, are intriguing. Part of a family of trees that provide a soothing anaesthetic, their bell-like flowers, smooth, creamy white like the moon, shine out against their dark green foliage. It is not advisable to sit in their shade; you may never wake up. One doctor told me that after years of tending his plant, he had lost the feeling in his hand. It seems that beauty can be deceptive and even dangerous.
Chalkie holds an MFA in Painting from Camberwell UAL and an MA in Arts and Learning from Goldsmiths. She also has a distinction for her Diploma in Portraiture, awarded by the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and a merit for her Graduate Diploma in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art.
May 2024
Sarah Chalkie Cloonan 