Statement
It is the responsive action and energy of drawing which leads my practice, resulting in the process becoming both a physically and emotionally charged act.
When working, the studio is a quiet space without the disturbance or influence of music or voices on the radio. The time is used to listen, to connect and to respond. The studio creates an intimate space leaving nowhere to hide, drawing out and exposing the emotional connections found there and allowing the visceral language of drawing to speak for me.

Much time can be spent with the process before any marks are made, before a line is pushed or chased across the blank page whether that page be clay or paper. Drawing for me, enables the many disparate parts of self to fully, if only fleetingly, communicate and connect. By delving into memories, both the scarring and the joyous, the emotional connections discovered are momentarily acknowledged and only temporarily revealed before being hidden once again, within multi layered mark making, in the struggle for balance and a sense belonging.

Before commencing my role as Artist in Residence at Bath Spa University in 2020, I worked predominantly in three dimensions using monumental sculptural vessels as my carrier for drawing. The residency at Corsham Court has facilitated an intense exploration of my drawing practice in its very broadest sense. The two mediums, although physically different from one another, share an intuitively energised process, exploring and revealing intimate and emotional connections and thoughts captured throughout the making process.

"There is a raw power to the work of Sarah Purvey; a directness. Her ceramic vessels and paintings on canvas or paper are not separate elements that are 'worked on' intellectually; rather, they are immediate expressions of her perceptions and feelings in a moment. In the same way that the wall of a vessel creates both an interior and exterior space, so her work represents a meeting point between the exterior perspective of the spectator and the interior emotions of the artist. She and her work are thus totally conjoined: each piece stands as a diary of unfiltered feelings, produced through a stream of consciousness."

 Ashley Thorpe,Forms of Expression- Published by the Crowood Press 2023: Excerpt from Chapter 17