Biography

Born and raised in New Zealand, but like many Kiwi's Sarah Dolby travelled - In her early twenties she spent months at a time in Indonesia escaping cold winters. There she travelled by motorbike hunting out surf spots and meeting the locals, camping next to jungles, eating amazing local cuisine and lazing on isolated islands and drawing in her journal.

Continuing her nomadic lifestyle Dolby continued to London where she worked as a waitress and mural painter - even painting part of the ceiling of the famous 'Polar Bear Pub' in Leicester Square before spending time in Morocco and later in Italy and France.

​Eventually she returned to Dunedin, New Zealand where at 27 she received a degree in Fine Arts and gain employment at Animation Research Ltd where she worked worked for 12 years doing everything from 3D animation, creative direction, production management, concept art, web design to even working on Formula One race courses.

​In 2012 Sarah held her first solo show as a full time artist in Auckland. The show was called 'Spindle' and featured large scale portrayals of fairytale characters and archetypes. At the time she was reading a lot of fairytales to her son and fell in love with the darkness of the original tales by Hans Christian Anderson and of course the brothers Grimm.

Presently splitting her time between her graphic work at Animation Research and painting, Sarah has been exhibiting both nationally and internationally - Dunedin, Auckland, Melbourne, Seattle and Los Angeles.

In recent years she has been exploring the relationships between humans and animals and how to extend her storytelling through these new characters, bringing another dimension into her meticulous oil paintings that address both the whimsical and the darker side of life.

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