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"Trained at Bristol and Manchester, Sarah completed her post-graduate studies at the Slade School of Art, London. Ostensibly realistic, her work goes beyond this to explore the nature of reality, and of time and space. The artworks are refined, emphasizing her knowledge and meticulousness in the chosen medium. But her art is not just representational: it also has a rare imaginative flair. The objects are changed into something which is beyond the original and which creates a kind of parallel ideal artistic reality. If this sounds a little like surrealism, then maybe that is not so far from the truth, but the work is subtler than that." - the words of a collector.

Having previously exhibited in many exhibitions in both the United Kingdom and France, Gold Fish Galleries in Sarasota, Florida then the Lincoln Centre in New York, I finished a commission from Cunard Line in 2003, through the art consultants "Onderneming & Kunst" to do six oil paintings for the penthouses on board the new "Queen Mary 2", the biggest passenger ship then ever built and launched in January, 2004. However, during working on this commission I had been become increasingly unwell and by the time it was finished I found myself unable to use my right arm. Signing the six works took a week in total and I was unable to finish varnishing them without enlisting the help of David, my husband. The diagnosis was not good, very aggressive chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. I really knew I had MS since my early twenties but for much of that time it had been very benign. The occassional relapse soon cleared up, leaving no apparent deficits, so I chose to ignore it. Several months after this latest diagnosis, though, with the help of a still experimental though thoroughly researched medical treatment which you can read about here: Sarah Longlands - MS page-1 I began tentatively painting in watercolours. Eventually I managed to do something which I wasn't embarrassed about and ended up putting in th bin.
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However, I was not content with spending the rest of my life as a watercolourist and at the start of 2006, I felt I had improved enough to start painting canvases again. I do now use top quality acrylic paints rather than oil paints, and this involved learning a whole new way of working. Always feeling cramped by small spaces, though, I not only started painting canvases again but painted larger canvases, free of the constraints I felt of four sides closing in on me..

These last few years have been very strange: forced to admit at last that I was very ill, I was suddenly on the way to recovery from an "incurable disease" before I really realised I had it. I have not had any adverse MS event since starting treatment and have done nothing but improve. I might still sometimes limp a little and not be able to walk or cycle as far as ten years ago, which was a very long way, but my mind is clearer than it has been for years and I have regained full use and more of my painting arm. For this I am truly thankful to both the people at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre and to my husband, David Wheldon, a consultant medical microbiologist who has been instrumental in bringing the treatment to the British Isles.
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