“My gorgeous life is reflected in the colors of my paintings. At eighty years old, besides writing my memoir and planning one last collection of my art that will be featured on Caspari Notecards, I continue to paint on commission for Private Collectors. Let me know if you are interested in having an original Sara Eyestone oil painting. My Pleasure.”
Studio Prices:
24 x 36 inches $10,000
36 x 48 inches $12,000
48 x 60 inches $16,000
My Studio Prices are available in other sizes as well.
“Examples of my originals from private collections are featured on this simplified website, followed by an extended biography. Future announcements will be added, as well as excerpts from my book that is underway.
My Sara Eyestone Art Posters and Signed Prints are no longer for sale; I save what is left for Gifts and Charities. When my new Caspari notecards are available in museums and fine shops throughout the United States and Europe, I will announce it here.
Most of my oil paintings below were commissioned by private collectors. None are available for sale, but they all give you an idea of what I love doing best…” SE
Click on each image…
Sara Eyestone has painted all her life. She is known for her elegant floral oil paintings, as well as portraits of her collectors and their animals, always with unusual combinations of glorious colors. For years she has painted exclusively on commission for private collectors the world over. Prior to that, the Artist had fifty one-woman exhibitions including a national tour, a one-woman exhibition at The Newark Museum and a retrospective at The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton. Her oil paintings were published on international art posters and Caspari note cards, featured in over 500 museum shops in the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Japan. Her signature lines of the past included Eyestone wall calendars, limited editions of her paintings, and home-furnishing fabrics. Currently the Artist is writing her memoir.
Sara Eyestone was born Artistic and had a privileged childhood in Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the daughter of nuclear physicist Robert Shreffler and his wife, Laura. They lived there after Oppenheimer in the 1940’s and ‘50’s when Los Alamos was still the Atomic City. Looking for her independence, Eyestone eloped at nineteen. In her twenties she had four children, supported her family with her paintbrush, and then moved them to The Jersey Shore, an hour by train from New York. There she was discovered by the art publishing industry. She made weekly trips to the city with her portfolio, knocking on doors to let “everyone in the art business” know she was there. The global exposure from reproductions of her originals brought significant opportunities her way with galleries, magazines, television appearances, and museum exhibitions. Licensing companies contracted for signature lines of Sara Eyestone’s products. She then fell in love with David Molin, and they have made a spectacular life together for almost fifty years.
Thirty-five years ago, when their children were in college or graduate school, David Molin and Sara Eyestone sold their Jersey Shore home, closed her Studio, and packed two small suitcases, one with art supplies and another with their bathing suits and a change of clothing. They left the East Coast for an uncharted journey that took them to places they had only dreamed about, spending winters in Hawaii, traveling to Holland when the tulips bloomed or to Tuscany if it was raining in Paris and Giverny. Every summer, the two of them spent time with collectors in Mexico before connecting with their children and parents in New Mexico at their Santa Fe Family Home.
The Artist painted commissions on location everywhere they went. “We were never more liberated!” she said with a hardy laugh. Their adventure lasted for seven years before they discovered San Antonio, Texas where they chose to live an urban life, downtown in an incredible gallery/residence on the spectacular Riverwalk.
Eyestone rented a secluded studio in the west-side Barrio, a bicycle ride away. “Unlike any place I had ever painted, the Barrio was completely in Spanish. Very glamorous for a white girl from Los Alamos!”
Their new life continued to be magical.
David Molin and Sara Eyestone came to Texas for twelve years on the way to their next passage in Santa Fe. Their plan was to introduce Eyestone’s work throughout Texas, knowing that 81% of the art sold in New Mexico has always been purchased by Texans. Sara Eyestone’s dream was to have a studio on Santa Fe’s Plaza or Canyon Road. “As fate would have it, I got a better offer.”
Ms. Eyestone was asked to teach oil painting and memoir writing at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Furthermore, she was invited to be Art Curator at La Posada de Santa Fe, always known as The Art Hotel of New Mexico, and she was encouraged to use the hotel property as her studio. The Artist accepted the offer once she researched how the art program began in the early 1940’s. That is when The Staab House mansion, which is the heart of La Posada, was sold to a hotelier and became famous as the first public place in the state to feature art for sale. Even Georgia O’Keeffe showed her work there throughout the 1940’s.
Eyestone patterned today’s art program, inspired by the past, to be as Artist and Collector friendly as it once was, expanded by her own creative ideas. First, she invited accomplished American Artists with large followings of collectors to make up the stable. The Artists’ original paintings and sculpture would be sold at their Studio Prices rather than at Gallery Prices, which was to everyone’s advantage. To this day, the art of Suzanne Aulds, Don Ward, Kathleen Frank, Addie Draper, Doug Coffin, Sally Delap-John, Leela Marcum, and Elizabeth Rickert continues to be showcased and sold in La Posada de Santa Fe’s public spaces.
Fifteen years ago, when she arrived in New Mexico, Sara Eyestone began writing notes for her memoir. Soon after, she launched La Posada’s weekly Memoir Writing Group, asking writers and published authors to put their own stories on paper, inspired by her creative writing prompts. The Group meets every Thursday morning, nine to eleven, over coffee in La Posada’s Staab House Bar. She also shares her weekly writing prompts online for interested writers throughout the country. If you love to write, Sara Eyestone will gladly have your contact information added to her Writer’s List.
As a child of Los Alamos in the 40’s and 50’s, Sara Eyestone is a wealth of local information. In her weekly Story Hours in La Posada’s lobby every Friday from four to five, Eyestone entertains visitors and friends with topics that range from the 1800’s to present day, including Artist Stories, past and present, drawn from letters written from 1830 to 1950. Wine served is compliments of the hotel.
Sara Eyestone consults privately with individual, professional Artists, helping them establish better business plans that include licensing signature lines of their art with manufacturers and publishing houses. She encourages Artists who love to write to put a book together. Her mantra is, “We have only so much time.” Sara Eyestone makes the most of hers.
“My advice to professional Artists: Instigate a new Plan. Re-do your website; make it brief and timely. Keep a very small handful of galleries. Think Big. There are over 700 museums in our country. Find one to feature a series of your original work in a one-person museum exhibition. It will serve you well. Things will improve, but they will never be the same. Who better to evolve than creative people? Knowing that art survives civilizations, think out of the box.” SE
