Artist Spotlight: Sarah Washburn Thornton

Oftentimes when Sarah Washburn Thornton sits down to make art, there’s no motive, no intention, no plan. It’s automatic.

“[Automatic art is] when you don’t start with a plan to paint and instead you start with a blank piece of paper,” Thornton said. “It’s more about your body than the drawing you’ve produced. You’re not thinking about the final product, but you’re thinking about the process of making it. Some of it can be self-referential.”

Thornton is a senior studio arts major at Pitt who has made abstract paintings since high school, and her art is on display at the Frick Fine Arts Building. When she started at Pitt, Thornton was set on majoring in physics or astronomy — nothing close to the abstract acrylics work she does now. Science is an important part of Thornton’s art though, and sometimes it mixes with her automatic drawings.

She most recently hooked herself up to a heart rate monitor and as her heart rate slowed, she made a certain type of line and as her heart rate increased, she drew a different type of line. Automatic drawings are abstract and engage your body in making the work, and whatever happens is a record of what you did during that time, she said.

Thornton’s favorite work of her own is a series of journals that acts as her creative routine. It contains her responses to the 2016 election, collages, business cards that she’s collected, color samples, parking tickets, cutouts from magazines and kind text messages she printed out.

“[The journal is] not the biggest or the fanciest or even the best executed, but it is so long and so ongoing that it requires a lot of dedication,” Thornton said. “I’m really proud of that.”