Dallas based artist, Anastacia Sadeh, graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a double major in Art History and Printmaking/Drawing under the instruction of artists Joan Hall, Peter Marcus, and Lisa Bulawsky. After a brief time teaching fine arts in Atlanta, Anastacia moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where she was accepted into the AZ Cooperative Gallery, a democratically run artists’ cooperative, one of the first such live-work spaces in the country. 

Her love of layering both color and form within printmaking transitioned into abstract painting during this time as her interest in using her work as a conduit to explore emotions grew. Her shift to the intangible developed out of a personal undertaking of exploring mental wellbeing and human connection. She looks at her work as a journey of personal vulnerability that holds the belief that mental health makes or breaks communities. 

Sadeh’s current work explores the ongoing relationship between emotional authenticity, self-awareness, and mental health. Her works are records of often fleeting emotions built through layers of water-based media and Venetian plaster. She explores the complexity of emotions as they pertain to mental wellness. Her current preference is to work on either stretched canvas or cradled wood panels.

She currently resides and works in Dallas, Texas, with her family and two dogs. Her portfolio captures internal images of humanity as she explores it personally and empathetically. Sadeh's work conveys her acknowledgment and acceptance of the encountered feelings and emotional experiences of each present day.  

She shares her work via online platforms, juried gallery venues, and enjoys donating her work to multiple charities (Dwell With Dignity,  Flite To Freedom, Dallas Children's Advocacy Center, and Legal Hospice). Sadeh is a member of the Texas Visual Arts Association, a non-profit association who’s work with Texas artists spans 60 years. She is also a member of  VAGF, Visual Arts Guild of Frisco, a volunteer, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting the visual arts and educating the public founded in 2001.  She also has participated in venues supported by the Plano Art Association and the Creative Arts Center of Dallas.  

My current work explores the transient and complex nature of human emotions as they relate to the importance of mental health and wellness. My work is a thoughtfully explored collection of abstracted portraits of various emotions as they move through their fragile and often fleeting existence. It is an exploratory record of the felt, but unseen. 

My personal reflections (both conscious and subconscious) are built through literal layers of paint and plaster as a record of the temporal nature of human emotions.  I begin the foundational layers of my works with an ironic sense of purposeful accident by allowing for my chosen medium to move without my immediate influence.  Using gravity and air to guide the patterns of the paint, I create the compositional skeleton of each piece upon which the entire work is then based. This step represents my acknowledgment that much of our circumstances and our resulting emotions cannot be chosen or controlled.  I then use these loosely guided marks to begin my finished work in the same way I have learned to sit with any number of unchosen emotions before I intentionally decide my response to them.  This process of gradually gained control is a therapeutic nod to the power of acceptance and sanctuary of spiritual faith.

My compositions are usually a combination of these accidental and subsequent deliberate marks and colors; however, I sometimes include representations of recognizable objects.  These representations serve a personal and instructional role that convey a concrete thought about which I am curious. However I decide to make the compositions unfold, it is the act of creating multiple layers that serve as my most loved visual objective. This process is a recurring theme in my pieces. It reflects how choices in life build upon themselves to create the whole.  

As far as mediums, I primarily use acrylics and other water based mediums. I also often work over a foundation of manipulated Venetian plaster.  The plaster represents the emotional ‘skin’ of a person and/or myself.  Sometimes I sand the plaster to a smooth surface to represent the nature of innocence.  At other times, I manipulate it into various textures using fabric in order to acknowledge the connection of our pasts' fabric on the emotions of our present mind.  My preference currently is to work on either stretched canvas or cradled wood panels.