Sarah Gay

Sarah Gay is an illustrator, educator, and mixed-media artist whose work bridges narrative story telling and intuitive abstraction. She teaches illustration at Lesley University and collaborates with local communities to create projects rooted in care, justice, and collective imagination. Her practice reflects a devotion to the natural world and a responsibility to uplift and honor human dignity in all its forms.

A long-time Boston resident, Sarah has created large-scale murals across the city and worked with brands such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Jo Malone London. In 2024, her design was selected by the Somerville Arts Council as the official ArtBeat Festival poster, celebrating the city’s annual gathering of creativity and community. That same year, the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Advancement at Boston City Hall chose her artwork to represent The Period Art Pop-Up—an exhibition championing menstrual justice in support of the “I AM” bill (S.1549 & H.2483), which calls for free, stigma-free access to menstrual products in Massachusetts schools, shelters, and correctional facilities.

Sarah’s teaching extends beyond the classroom into public, collaborative work. Most recently, she partnered with the University of Massachusetts to lead an observational drawing workshop designed to connect the public with the university’s Natural History Archives Collections. She completed Harvard’s Women in Leadership: Online Program for Emerging Leaders, an intensive training in strategy, communication, and negotiation. The program deepened her approach to leadership, inspiring her to mentor emerging artists and build stronger, more connected communities through her work.

Her creative rhythm has been shaped by chronic illness, including CTEPH, endometriosis, and POTS. These conditions reshaped her practice into one that is slower and more reflective, emphasizing presence, listening, and making space. In her current work, she explores these themes through abstract mixed media: layering watercolor, handmade inks, colored pencil, and oil pigment sticks. This shift expands, rather than replaces, her roots in narrative illustration: Story continues to guide the work, but with a new cadence and atmosphere.

Her practice holds both discipline and discovery, always in service of her core belief: that art can be a vessel for reflection, healing, and radical connection.

Sarah received her BFA and Master’s degrees from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she remains active in both continuing education and youth programs.