Sarah McCarty has been creating still life egg tempera paintings for the past 30 years. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1951 to an architect father and a mother who was a poet and gardener, Sarah has been interested in art and nature ever since she can remember. She graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville as a printmaking and drawing major. After graduation, she lived in New York City, Scotland and Venice in order to pursue her interest in copper engraving. 

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While in Venice, on her daily walk to the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, she passed an old shop which sold antique dry pigments.  Always interested in art history and old techniques, Sarah became inspired to learn more about the ancient craft of egg tempera painting. After relocating to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1981, she began to teach herself to paint using this method.

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Egg tempera is a pre-Renaissance water-based painting technique using egg yolks as the binder for the paint, a method which preceded the use of oil as a painting medium. Dry pigment is ground in water and mixed with egg yolk to create paint, which is usually applied to gessoed boards. Sarah uses these traditional methods as described by Cennino Cellini in his treatise, Il Libro dell’arte.

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Sarah is a garden designer as well as a painter. Many of the elements of her still life paintings come directly from her garden and her passion for plants, fruits, vegetables and the natural world.  Her paintings are inspired by the work of such painters as Giovanna Garzoni and Albrecht Dürer, as well as the border illustrations in medieval illuminated manuscripts.

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Sarah's work is represented by the Argos Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.