Sabra Field: The Art of Place

Her prints hang in the boardrooms of some of North America’s biggest corporations―and in the cabins of some of New England’s most rustic fishing camps. Among the few contemporary artists whose work has found an enthusiastic following well outside the traditional world of collectors and fine-art experts, Sabra Field has attracted a diverse and growing national audience. Her 1987 Vermont Bicentennial commemorative stamp, for example, depicting yellow farm fields, a red barn, and blue mountains, quickly became one of the U.S. Postal Service’s best-selling issues, with more than 60 million copies purchased. Author Tom Slayton says that Field, who lives deep in the Vermont countryside, brilliantly expresses “a rural zeigeist in her wood-block prints that is in the age-old traditional of pastoralism . . . which belies the underlying complexity of her work.” But while Field’s work falls solidly within the pastoral tradition, it also significantly updates it, striking a chord with activist environmentalists and policymakers and inspiring action not normally associated with the traditions of pastoral art. One of North America’s most accomplished contemporary printmakers, Sabra Field produces works of great beauty and boldness―with the power to command attention and appreciation at first glance and to endure the test of time in the eyes of their beholders. She is also coauthor of Before Life Hurries On.