3rd Place Winning Entry, 2024 Animals Competition
Sarah Lake, Masai, paper art
Sarah Lake
Sarah Lake is deeply passionate about wildlife and conservation. Based in Kent, she creates meticulously detailed artwork of endangered animal species. Her work is extraordinary and so is her medium of choice. She is an award-winning paper artist, and her tools consist of paper and scalpel. Lake's painstaking process can take more than 300 hours for a single artwork. "Every piece starts out with a photograph I have usually taken myself," she says. "I then separate it into the number of layers I want to work with. The more layers, the more detail there will be in the final artwork. Then I hand cut each layer using a scalpel and combine them. Every photo is used just once so each piece of art is unique."
Sarah Lake, Gaysha, paper art
Lake's goal is that her pieces are indistinguishable at a distance from any other work using more traditional media, and only when they look at it up close the viewer will discover it is created from individual layers of paper. Lake started experimenting with paper art as a hobby more than ten years ago, and as her work became known, she received widespread recognition. In 2023, she won the Wings Category in the prestigious David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation Wildlife Artist of the Year, in 2022 she was a finalist. She also won the Explorers Against Extinction Sketch for Survival Wildlife 100 Artist of the Year in 2021, and was a finalist in 2023.
Sarah Lake, Abou, paper art
Lake supports numerous wildlife organizations, donating funds from the sale of her work. "What I love about my work," she says, "is that I'm able to help so many conservation organizations raise funds and public awareness. "I have worked with some amazing charities and look forward to being involved with others in the future."
