Lipstick painter rejected in SA seduces Japan

19 May 2015 - 02:06 By Katharine Child

Most women wear lipstick for dates but Sarah Britten uses it to paint cows. Sarah Britten, however, uses her lipstick to paint cows.She depicts Nguni cattle and mythical Japanese Akabeko cows, which are said to have magically appeared in Fukushima in 804AD to help a monk transport materials to complete the Enzo-ji Buddhist temple.Brand consultant Britten’s works have been accepted into Art Fair Tokyo, Japan's largest art exhibition, which takes place this weekend. One piece features an Akabeko standing in front of a Johannesburg skyline.Britten says she is not taken seriously as a painter in South Africa by professional artists. Her day job as a marketer is footing the bill for her Japan trip.After her paintings didn't make the cut for the Cape Town Art Fair, her friend Juan Coetzee, who helps sell her art, secretly entered her work into Art Fair Tokyo.Britten said: “I was completely not surprised by [being rejected by the Cape Town fair] because the art scene in this country is smaller and more exclusive.“You ideally need a masters in fine art and you need to be part of the inner circle. It is easier to make an impact overseas than it is here.”She plans to paint in lipstick at the exhibition to prove her work is really done with makeup. It takes her roughly an hour to finish a picture that is outlined first in black eyeliner.Britten started painting with lipstick in 2002 on cardboard that her ex-husband used to build architectural models.She said the thick carboard with a shiny surface worked well to absorb the lipstick’s moisture. When her ex, who was abroad, heard she was painting in lipstick he thought she was painting “angry feminist” art.But she was mostly painting apples.“I was finishing my PhD…well not finishing it,” she jokes. “The form the procrastination took was painting with lipstick.”Her current husband, YFM CEO Kantham Pillay, whom she eloped with last year and introduced to the world using Twitter and the phrase "mybestbeloved" is travelling with her to Japan. Asked if taking pictures of animals to Japan is cliched, she says she doesn’t think her pictures of President Jacob Zuma’s firepool and her “disturbing” art depicting South Africa’s high rate of violence against women will sell well.“I love painting animals, but I usually paint in realistic colours [using black and grey lipstick].”All the pictures going to Japan are in red.“If you can imagine being at the fair, in a large warehouse, competing with hundreds of artists, you need to stand out. And seeing animals in red is unusual.”..

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