SARA New Graduates 2025

Artist statement: Graduated from SARA Academy in January 2025. With a decade of focus on visionary & psychedelic art fused with symbolism, mythology and many facets of the human experience. Having gotten inspiration from life itself and its infinite beauty & mystery, picking up threads from nature, geometry, dreams, human history & evolution, and the deep inner landscapes of the mind. Now with the given tools of such a potent education looking to blend these symbolic and metaphysical ideas with realism through brush strokes & careful observation of the inner & outer world. - In portraying individual and collective experiences we have as humans I aspire to resonate & connect with people around the world through the visual language of art.
instagram: @alex.hedstrom

Artist Statement: Elsa primarily works with oil painting but also enjoys drawing with charcoal and white chalk. Through her education at The Swedish Academy of Realist Art, she has developed a strong connection to traditional painting, particularly still lifes, figurative work, and portraiture. Her artistic practice is deeply influenced by a fascination with light, color, and the symbolism found in nature, mythology, and spiritual traditions. A central source of inspiration is the Indian bhakti tradition, which she has studied and practiced since her teenage years, including time spent as a nun in a temple and extended travels in India.
www: elsathunander.com
instagram: @elsathunander

Artist statement: I was born in 1999, in Edenton, North Carolina; a small colonial village on the East Coast of the U.S.
I’ve always had a fascination with old things and their craftsmanship for as long as I can remember. As a boy, I would dig up 1600s porcelain fragments in my backyard and study them. This pursuit of aesthetics and craftsmanship has stayed with me to this day. My artwork is as much about continuing the once dead legacy of the french academies (to which SARA can trace its direct lineage), as it is a personal journal told through symbolist paintings and various passing fascinations.

Artist statement: Julius Jenny born 2000 Germany, based in Switzerland. My work is focused on subverting viewing habits through finding beauty in the surreal and grotesque. Exploring organic and amorphous processes interacting with more traditional subjects. Using these interactions as a symbolic reflection on the way we value and separate parts of nature and ourselves through our perception. Fusing the familiar and the unknown serves as an exploration of the human condition and its intersection with the metaphysical.
instagram: @Julius.j_

Artist statement: My artworks are a reflection of my inner being and the way I see the world. They tell an unheard story, which I embody in my art through a combination of my cultural background and upbringing. This always shines through in my work and completes it in a colorful manner.
instagram: @Keren.Socadjo

Artist Statement: Throughout my life I’d always immerse myself in nature or in mythical worlds through art and books. My art explores this intersection of the supernatural and the beauty of the natural world. Through my paintings I capture the essence of what I hold the most dear. By weaving mythology and symbolism into my work, I invite others to spark personal reflection and connection.
instagram: @bokreart

Artist statement: My art is a reflection of my lifelong fascination with the power of storytelling, particularly the rich and evocative narratives found in folklore and mythologies. Through my work, I strive to capture the curious and wondrous moments of human encounter with the unknown, exploring the liminal spaces between reality and imagination. By using traditional techniques and thoughtful attention to detail, I evoke the enduring magic of storytelling, prompting reflection and inviting viewers to journey with me to otherworldly realms.
instagram: @_mazzart_

Artist statement: Through my work I like to explore universal and fundamental facets of our experience, such as desire, conflict, suffering, birth, death and love, often in the form of a narrative and symbols. As I develop a story, I am always amazed by how it seems to have a way to create its own identity and reveal aspects of life I was previously unaware of.

Artist Statement: My artwork is driven by a fascination with mystique and atmosphere. I’m heavily inspired by dark and gothic sceneries, where the veil of darkness obscures the visible and invites the mind to wander beyond. I strive to capture the quiet tension and silent beauty that emerges in these shadowed spaces. Echoes of nature’s nocturnal songs and the unknown just out of reach.
instagram: @reubensundstrom

Artist statement: My name is Samuel Johansson and I have ten sentences to say something about myself in general and as an artist. Nine sentences now. I am 31 years old, I come from Örebro and I find that ten sentences gives me both a lot of space and very little to say much about anything of weight. So do feel free to come by the exhibition and talk art with me! Painting is magic, the realist figurative painting a selective sifting of reality according to taste and liking with, in my opinion as a goal to keep the most satisfying aspects from a fundamentally personal perspective. A mirroring of reality filtered through a human mind that say as much about the motive as it does about the observer. The realistic figurative painting is something I find eminently human and it is before anything else this aspect that appeals to me. (And for those of you who would not leave this paragraph satisfied without knowing, this was only eight sentences).
instagram: @carlsamueljohanssonart