August—Sarah B. Hansen, "Untamed Bloom"
2025-08-01 15:00 - 2025-09-01 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Tumalo Art Co., 450 SW Powerhouse Dr. #407, Bend, OR, 97702, United States
Softly Spoken

S A R A H B. H A N S E N

The opening reception Sarah B. Hansen’s exhibit is August 1,
from 3-7pm during the Old Mill District First Friday Gallery Walk.
“This series grew out of a deep need to express the wild, unbound
energy I see pulsing through both nature and the human spirit.
These paintings are my way of honoring that raw life force—
the kind that shows up in the wildflowers pushing through
cracked sidewalks, leaning into the wind, or blooming in tangled,
forgotten corners of the world.”

Fire Within
Each painting becomes a meditation on energy—raw, free, and unapologetically vibrant.
The wildflowers are portrayed in their natural environments, not as carefully curated garden
specimens but as spontaneous bursts of color and form, rising defiantly from the earth, dancing with the wind,
thriving in chaos. Untamed Bloom captures the essence of wildflowers not as delicate ornaments of nature,
but as fierce expressions of life’s uncontainable force.

Dancing Laughter

“Wildflowers have always fascinated me. They don’t ask for permission to exist—they just do.
Their colors, shapes, and movement seem to come from some deep instinct, an urgency to live fully,
no matter the conditions. I wanted to capture that—how beauty and vitality often thrive in the margins,
how chaos and harmony can exist together.”

Enthusiasm

These works spotlight negative shape as a way to amplify presence through absence.
The space around each bloom is as meaningful as the flower itself—those gaps, hollows, and shadows
echo the emotional pauses and voids we all carry. Through these forms, the viewer is invited to feel
not just what is seen, but what is felt: resilience in fragility, movement in stillness, and growth through adversity.
Those empty forms mirror the pauses in life: the uncertainty, the loneliness,
the moments of stillness before something shifts.

Abounding Joy

There is a powerful parallel drawn between nature and the human condition.
Like wildflowers, we emerge in unexpected places, shaped by the environments that test us.
The tangled stems and unpredictable compositions mirror the emotional complexities and internal struggles we face.
The contrast of bold color against the quiet of negative space reflects how joy, grief, love, and loss often live side by side.
In that way, the work is deeply personal.
“Every flower in this series holds a different emotional tone—sometimes vibrant and loud, other times soft and unraveling. They reflect the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and breakdowns we all move through as humans. This work isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence. About showing up in all our messy, radiant, ever-changing states.”

Balance
Ultimately, Untamed Bloom is not just about the beauty of wildflowers it is a love letter to resilience.
To the beauty of not being cultivated or controlled, the emotional wilderness we all carry inside us, and to the
courage it takes to bloom anyway. It’s about honoring the emotional landscapes we traverse, a visual poem to survival, vulnerability, and the often messy, always miraculous nature of being alive.

We look forward to seeing you during our First Friday opening this Friday. Come and chat with the artists and see the artwork throughout the gallery from 3-7pm, August 1, or throughout the month.
• • • • •
Take in all of the galleries and studios in the Old Mill District — Lubbesmeyers Studio & Gallery, Stacks Studios & Gallery (just upstairs), and Amejko (in the little red house) along with Tumalo Art Co. (the hub), and various stores host artists for the First Friday Gallery Walk every month. Stop by—we have flyers and can direct you.
