by Dr. Patricia Groves

An anchor in the artistic community, providing support and opportunity to all her colleagues, Sarah White will be wholeheartedly missed. Very much loved by all who had the privilege of her friendship, Sarah was first of all a wonderfully generous and giving person, very caring, warm, lively, interesting and energetic. She was down-to-earth, very human – an absolute joy to be with.

A person of natural authority and stature, Sarah was also modest and thought more about others than about herself. Sarah’s outstanding contribution lies not only in her prolific and innovative artistic creativity, but also in the key roles she played in the development and management of the Bait Al Zubair Museum complex including the conceptualisation, organisation and curation of countless exhibitions, including a charity event that each year gave some two hundred artists – known, emerging and new – a chance to participate.

Unending Time, Energy and Creativity
In her primary role as Arts Advisor and Manager of the Bait Al Zubair Foundation, Sarah devoted unending time, effort, energy, and creativity to the advancement of art in Oman. Among many notable accomplishments was The Art of Oman, the first book to be published on the art of the Sultanate (2006). Her writing career had recently taken a significant leap forward with the publication of a key article on private museums in the GCC for the British Museum.

Resident in Oman for more than two decades, Sarah has a number of exhibitions to her credit in London as well as Muscat. An award-winning graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, completing a Masters in Fine Arts with distinction, Sarah began her formal career in the mid-nineties as Curator and Manager of Bait Al Bagh at Bait Al Zubair, a museum which she played a major role in creating.

Early on in her life
In her work as an artist, Sarah White’s dominant focus was on the theme of personal expression through architectural elements in her own impressionistic semi-abstract genre. This nascent theme in Sarah’s creative psyche began to formulate when she was an undergraduate at Bristol University in the late 1980s. The port city of Bristol played an important role in Britain’s industrial revolution, but many of the old warehouses and factories that once fuelled a vital commercial port stood abandoned and derelict. For Sarah, they seemed to represent ‘a sorry architecture of lost meaning’ that could be unravelled on canvas.

At the Royal Academy of Art In London Sarah’s focus gravitated to city life and the metal and glass surfaces which formed a kind of sculptural backdrop in the lives of people. Sarah’s parents were living in Oman and the journeys back and forth from London to Muscat crystallised in one of the most important exhibitions in her life.

This was a solo exhibition at the Royal College of Art in 1992, a seminal year for twenty-two year-old Sarah. The exhibition forced the young artist to make sense of the revolving places in her life. Architecture was the natural vehicle, and would be become an enduring substructure and rich endowment in the evolution of her thought and work.

Her work was gaining recognition and Sarah was asked to provide illustrative drawings for the first major book on the architecture of Oman, by Salma Damlugi – a book honoured with a foreword by HRH Charles, Prince of Wales. Opened by Princess Alexandra, the launch ceremony was attended by HH Sayyid Assad bin Tariq.

Elusive meanings. living light
When she settled in Oman, Sarah found the traditional architecture of Oman an ideal subject – at once utilitarian and beautiful. While solid and made to last at least a lifetime, a building is a transient phenomenon, inevitably acquiring different meanings over time for those who live, work or worship in them. Searching out these elusive meanings, revealing and/or camouflaging structures and the feelings within them was a passionate preoccupation for Sarah.

Within Sarah’s architectural genre, a recurring subject was her beloved Jabreen Castle, its balconies, scalloped arches; and, above all, its romantic atmosphere.

“In Jabreen Castle there is a tangible sense of history. It feels almost as if I am painting in the mist of memory. Some of the rooms in the Castle that we can now freely enter were once the private interior spaces of former residents. When you venture inside these rooms, there is a haunting feeling of presence”. Sarah turned that presence into light, living colour and unforgettable imagery.

An Epiphany
She was a collaborative artist who preferred joint to solo exhibitions and built productive relations with other Muscat artists. She exhibited frequently with Omani artist, Moosa Omar, as well as with fellow women artists. The 2010 Female Interpretation exhibition with Radhika Hamlai, Maryam Al Zadjali, and Tahira Fida was a watershed. No-one would have predicted the spectacular change that came with this exhibition.

With a blast of colour Sarah presented ‘extra-terrestrial’ women in extreme make-up. One, with a blue face and fine white tattoo markings, had eerily forecast the heroine of the blockbuster film, Avatar. Some faces were gorgeously framed in lacework veils accented with highly ornamental diadems and hijabs edged in rich gold embroidery. Acrylic paint is applied in thick gobs, like overdone make-up. Real glitter and gold leaf were layered in generous quantities upon the paint. The result was electric.

It was a smashing success. While, for the public, this exhibition was a huge surprise, for Sarah it was the formal realisation of a theme that had been with her since early childhood when she imagined herself as both an artist and a rock star and was always drawing her fantasies.

“At school I was involved in stage make-up and I loved making people into other selves – like my little brother whom I would make into an old man one day and a weird punk rocker the next. My interest in people, their faces and persona has always been part of me – and so the Female Interpretation exhibition was tremendously important as I allowed myself to paint from the deeper levels of my identity… It was a kind of epiphany. I feel I have come into my own as an artist. I could cry with joy.”

Sarah’s Legacy
For the Omani Society for Fine Arts 2010 Annual Exhibition, Sarah produced one of her greatest works – a magnus opus. The work, titled A Life Eclectic, is a huge, painted quilt-work of numerous small, tile-like canvasses arranged as tesserae in a vast mosaic. The canvas tiles represent abstract journal entries in the life of the artist.

“This piece reflects my identity as a Third Culture artist, having
lived over half my life in Oman and originating from UK… I have
developed and nurtured an eclectic lifestyle and taste. It reflects personal
emotions, fears, challenges and passions.”

The mosaic is studded with v-shaped, mirror-faced projections that reflect each other, the artwork, even the viewer’s image, as if sharing Sarah’s life.

This fabulous work now hangs in Bait Al Nadha at the Bait Al Zubair complex, a flagship in an extraordinary oeuvre. Sarah’s place in the history of art and culture in Oman is assured.

But her legacy also includes a lasting impact on the lives of others, professionally and personally. Sarah was greatly loved by all who knew her – and admired by many, many more. Hers was a life well-lived. Sarah White shall remain firmly lodged in our hearts.