SARA STEELE is an accomplished watercolorist whose exhibits in the U.S. and Europe include a solo show at the renowned monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain in 2000. Her exhibition “Sara Steele: Blueprints for Paradise” opened in June 2005 at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art. Planning for the exhibition’s tour is underway, and a major new mid-career survey, titled Blueprints for Paradise, The Watercolor Paintings of Sara Steele, has recently been published.

The self-taught artist’s work ranges from nearly-traditional botanicals to landscapes, still-lives and abstractions. Even her most representational works are expressionistic, and natural forms echo throughout her most abstract work. Steele’s deep and abiding love of color, structure, music and languages are dynamically visible throughout her oeuvre, as are her passionate interests in ecology and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Steele’s work with progressive organizations over a span of three decades illustrates her conviction in beauty as an instrument of social change. The National Domestic Violence Hotline, the Nature Conservancy, the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, National Wildlife Federation, SANE/Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, Action AIDS, and Living Beyond Breast Cancer, are but a few such organizations. Her work has also been distributed widely to women’s shelters, clinics, hospices and prisons throughout the U.S. and Canada. In November 2005 she completed a 2-story mural for Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program.

In 2003 Steele was a recipient of the Leeway Foundation’s Window of Opportunity grant. Among the grants and awards she has received for her art and social activism are the Peace and Freedom Award of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the Crystal Stair Award from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work, and the Brandt F. Steele Aesthetic Award for the Promotion of Peace & Prevention of Violence from Primary Children’s Medical Center, Salt Lake City, UT.

The Artist’s body of work "Nuclear Family Holocaust” courageously addresses her own experiences of personal violence. It has been presented in a wide range of forums, both as a process for healing and to raise awareness of the broader social and political issues. Through a major grant in 1997, Steele was the first Artist-in-Residence at Friends Hospital, working collaboratively with the inpatient Sanctuary trauma unit. Throughout the 1990's she led workshops for women survivors of personal violence as part of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ (PAFA) annual U.S.Artists exhibit. Her work with the Clothesline Project has included public displays for PAFA and in Philadelphia’s City Hall Courtyard.

Steele is well known for her internationally distributed calendars, continuously in print for 27 years. Her paintings, drawings and pastels are included in several hundred private and public collections. In Bloom, an earlier monograph of her floral work, was published in 1994. Her new book, calendars, limited edition prints and more can be found at www.sarasteele.com.