The Arts & Culture Journal

Sarah-Jane Szikora’s highly humorous and colourful works of art are sorely sought after and her limited edition prints are snapped up quicker than free Jammy Dodgers at a fresher’s fair.

Szikora’s style is recognisable by her characters and witty subject matters. We’ve all been told not to play with our food; well, Szikora doesn’t just play with food, she plays with words as well. Her paintings often rely on a concept to work, but are far from conceptual art. The concept could be a fusion of two things that are familiar or ordinary – like an idiom, or a set of everyday circumstances – that when put together create something new and unexpected, often ridiculous, and always amusing.

Take Nun’s Habit, for example; when I heard this title, an image of a nun’s headwear sprung to mind – fairly mundane. Then I looked at the picture and laughed out loud. Szikora turns the habit into a pun by painting a picture of a nun caught in the act of picking up a takeaway pizza – a very different kind of habit for a nun to keep! (It’s now become a little game of mine to look at the title of her work to try to guess what the twist will be, before looking at the piece itself.)

Conceptual art is defined by the idea – the theory of putting together the art, and the concept that it instils. Damien Hurst, for example, didn’t need to paint the spots of his spot paintings himself – neither does he need to actually create anything further than his concepts - they are his ideas, therefore they are his art works. It was in fact artist Rachel Howard who painted most of Damien’s spot paintings. Szikora’s popularity is largely due to her comical concepts; but it is also her unique style and skill that sets her paintings apart – simultaneously setting her apart from the conceptual artists. Because she devises the idea and executes the finished product, she is not essentially a conceptual artist.