“A joy to be hidden but a disaster never to be found” – Winnicot
‘The atmosphere of care , love and absolute safety was beautiful.’
Katie Sarra is an artist who paints all aspects of people’s bodies inviting people to have an experience of celebrating their bodies being captured in oil on canvas. She has been working with our relationships with our bodies for over twenty years and is a qualified and experienced art psychotherapist and practices as a sex and relationship therapist alongside her practice here as an artist. She is trained in creating a safe environment for self expression with confidentiality and personal boundaries supported.
“She is friendly, generous, tender, funny, nurturing, warm, welcoming and playful and she has the capacity to be quiet with you in your stillness.”
These body portraits explore beauty, identity, relationship and sexuality.
Katie invites you to be witnessed just as you are, painted with loving eyes. Her intimate oil paintings celebrate, witness and honor you through a relationship and dialogue that emerges during the time you spend together. You are invited into an experience where you can relax into your naturalness and feel liberated from self conscious worries about your body. Each painting is as much about the process as the finished piece. Katie creates an environment and relationship with the model that allows her to witness, honour and celebrate the naked body safely, respecting personal boundaries. This can be a healing opportunity to explore emotions of self conscious inhibitions, voyeurism and exhibitionism. This is a lovely gift for yourself and many have gifted their loved ones with this unique painting of their body.
How the man or woman feels about his/her body will be influenced by this process. What it feels like to undress, be witnessed, how he/she is witnessed reflects his/her feelings about that encounter. It encapsulates what it feels like to be a man or woman in our culture. This is always a complex experience with mixtures of thoughts and feelings that can be enabling and constraining at the same time. It can be a potentially healing experience… a new mirroring can take place which can open up new dialogue with how we feel and see our selves.
I am painting the you that is bigger than self conscious worries about body imperfections. I paint from the heart seeing you. You can be any way you are with me and rediscover feeling comfortable with your body.
Women and men can naturally be as they are in soft light undressed or just revealing part of your body to be painted. For men, concerns around the involuntory expressions of your body can be discussed with ease. I feel relaxed about exploring in paint safely with you.
I’ve recently been on a mission to do things that are out of my comfort zone, to stretch my comfort zone to do something that I wouldn’t do normally. I wanted to feel comfortable to be with my body as it is. I have spent sometime thinking that I should be skinny or slim, but I didn’t do anything about it so I must be comfortable as I am. I wanted a record of this, how I feel about my body and that I am comfortable.”
“Us Two” Being painted as a couple.
As well as painting individuals, Katie works with couples painting and marking in time the union of two people’s life and bodies together on canvas. This is a beautiful experience and the couple choose their music and model in my warm Temple amongst lots of cushions with candles lit. This makes a lovely gift to give you and your partner as a celebration of your coming together and/or as an anniversary celebration.
“It felt like a very sexy erotic sensuous experience that I could share with my wife. I found the idea of the artist as voyeur very exciting. As a quiet exhibitionist I didn’t need any persuasion. The atmosphere of care , love and absolute safety was beautiful Like it was the most natural loving and unifying thing to do. It took a time for me to relax but I trusted that me and my husband would fall into something naturally. I also asked Katie how did she want us to pose. When we started to chat we forgot where we were and katie spotted a moment and asked us to hold our hands in the position where our hands were. After that we dropped into a meditative space. I suppose I did expect a little awkwardness at the beginning as my partner and I are not known for spontaneity in this sort of environment, but I went instantly to a place that I can only describe as love.”
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