“I grew up with paint on my hands, dogs at my side and gardens filled with secrets. Raised by artist parents and shaped by days on my grandparents' farm, my childhood was a blend of creativity, adventure and wild wonder - threads that still run through everything I create today."
Sarah Grace (b. 1990, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) grew up in a creative home, schooled by her artist parents, Janine and George Holloway. From a young age, she worked alongside diverse South African artists including Jane du Rand, Richard Hart, Roger Jardine, Andries Botha, Pascale Chandler and Neil Coppen, gaining early exposure to a wide range of practices.
4-year-old Sarah walking in the KZN Drakensberg
3-year-old Sarah swinging in her Grandparents' farm garden
2-year-old Sarah Drawing in her mom's studio
18-month-old Sarah in Durban Botanical Gardens
3-year-old Sarah with Dad George and Mom Janine
22-month-old Sarah on her Grandparents' farm
In 2015, Sarah moved to Johannesburg to pursue her career as a full-time artist. She spent six months as assistant to Mandy Coppes-Martin and took a studio at Nugget Square, working alongside artists such as Gordon Froud, Vivien Kohler, Louis Olivier, Nandipha Mntambo and her father, George Holloway.
2016 Sarah with artists in Nugget Square Studios Johannesburg
2017 Sarah in her studio at The Villa Hyde Park Johannesburg
2017 Sarah working in her apartment in Illovo Johannesburg
2018 Sarah with Mom Janine outside of Priest Gallery for her solo Show Cosmic Egg
From 2016 to 2017, she held a 10-month residency at Hzrd Gallery under the mentorship of Jonathan Freemantle, culminating in a group exhibition with artists including Ledelle Moe, Alice Edy, Jojo Abot, and Lucy Turpin. This collaboration continued through The Villa project (2017–2018), a shared studio experiment in an abandoned mansion, which concluded with a major group exhibition featuring Givan Lotz, Michele Mathison, Jacob van Schalkwyk, Dokter and Misses, and David Brits, among others. In March 2018, Sarah presented her first solo exhibition at Priest Gallery.
2018 Sarah in her rooftop studio in Illovo Johannesburg
2019 Sarah in her rooftop studio in Illovo Johannesburg
2019 Invitation to exhibition Small Roof curated by Sarah Grace
She went on to exhibit at the Turbine Art Fair under Priest Gallery (2018–2019) and was invited to curate her first exhibition at Priest Gallery, showcasing a diverse group of contemporary artists. In 2019, she was selected as a finalist in the Emerging Painting Invitational (EPI) and exhibited at First Floor Gallery, Harare.
2020 Sarah in her apartment during lockdown part of the ‘Autumn Playground’ series
2020 Sarah painting murals in the hotel rooms for BlackBrick Johannesburg
2020 Sarah painting the outdoor mural for Blackbrick Johannesburg
In 2020, Sarah opened her solo exhibition Stolen From A Dream at Candice Berman Fine Art Gallery. During the COVID-19 lockdown, she collaborated with iStore South Africa to present a series of virtual workshops, while releasing two online collections: the Lockdown Series and Autumn Playground. Sarah also did a series of murals for the launch of BlackBrick in Johannesburg.
2020 Sarah at the opening of her solo show Stolen from a Dream at Candice Berman Gallery, johannesburg
2020 Sarah's first collaboration with iStore
2020 Sarah painting an outdoor mural at Curiocity, Cape Town
During her pregnancy with her daughter, Stevie Grace, in 2021, Sarah relocated to the remote Amathole mountains. Immersed in this landscape, she created Ancient Sunlight, exhibited at Candice Berman Gallery later that year. Her next solo exhibition, Sacred Wild (2022), reflected her first year of motherhood and her deepening connection to the natural world.
2021 Sarah painting on location in the Amathole Mountains in preparation for her solo show Ancient Sunlight
2021 Sarah with new born baby Stevie Grace
2022 Sarah in the studio painting with baby Stevie Grace
In 2024, Sarah exhibited with Candice Berman Gallery at RMB Latitude Art Fair in Johannesburg. She continues to live and work from her mountain studio in the Amathole region on a Protected Wetland Conservation and Regenerative Farm where she continues to explore the intersections of nature, ritual, and contemporary art making. In this season of life, her practice has also extended into older feminine traditions - stitching into cloth, painting on linens, dyeing fabrics, and starching - each act carrying echoes of ancestral memory. Harvesting flowers and plants from the land Sarah has also started making her own paper folding fragments of nature into her work. These gestures, born of motherhood and homemaking, become quiet rites of renewal, weaving together the domestic and the sacred. They are threads passed down through the hands of our forefathers, reimagined and reawakened in the hands of women, binding lineage to legacy and daily life to timeless creativity.
2025 Wildflower paper in her mountain studio
2025 Sarah stitching into her painting with embroidery thread
2025 Sarah stitching into a dyed linen artwork
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