Its here where I will give you updates on some studio happenings and an insight into the processses and tecniques I have used to create some of my work. You can also follow along on my tiktok if that's more your jam (@sal_barlow)!
First of all let me introduce myself... I'm Sally AKA @_salmakes and I'm currently in my final year of studying a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT on the Traditional lands of the WurundjeriWoi-wurrung people. My home studio is print so you will find lots of the works I create for uni will be related to print in one way or another, however I dont like to restrict myself to one medium and instead regulary explore new ways of creating art. I prioritise exploration over traditional parameters - so you may find that my work isn't perfect, but that is exactly how it is intended to be! My work is a celebration of rural life, nature, colour and lived experiences through a youthful and most of the time feminine lense.
Have fun roaming around my website,
Love, Sal xx
P.S Here is one of my fav series I have ever created - a lithographic series printed from a slab of limestone, and then coloured in with oil pastel. Its called "Don't Tell Mum" and is all about being a bit cheeky sometimes. 
Art History, Theory and Cultures - Contextulising Practice Essay 06/06/2025
Acknowledgement:
I would like to acknowledge that I live, write, and study on the unceded lands of the Bunurong, Woi Wurrung/Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
Contextualising Practice Essay:
Hey Reader,
I want to share with you some recent thoughts I’ve had surrounding the digital and media focused society we live in. Actually, saying they’re recent is a bit of a lie. These concerns have been simmering for a long time, and lately they’ve really started to influence my work.
In this blog-style essay I’ll show you guys how my contemporary printmaking practice can invite people back to into real-life moments in a world that feels increasingly digitalised, distracted, and detached. I want to discuss the notion of the sublime, especially the everyday sublime, and to bring to light how we are loosing touch with sublime moments in nature and our lives. I feel our attention has become fragmented and commodified. The digital world invites constant documentation, leaving less room to simply dwell in the moment. This disconnection has real consequences, emotionally, socially, and creatively.
My practice responds to this tension. Through semi-abstract mono prints that layer natural scenes with digital interference, I explore the collision between presence and distraction, the real and the virtual. Influenced by moments of pre-sense, affect theory, and material thinking, my work is a call to notice and to feel. It’s about holding space for the sublime in our daily lives and re connecting with real world. Strap in!
Let's start at the start shall we, what is “the sublime?” It's a term alludes to ‘that quality in nature or art which inspires awe, reverence, or other high emotion; the great beauty of grandeur of an object, place, etc.’ (Oxford English Dictionary, 2012). Traditionally it’s been used to describe intense natural beauty or wonder, such as crashing waves, jagged mountains of vast starry skies.
Poet William Wordsworth mourned the way industrialisation dulled our connection to this kind of natural sublimity during the romantic period. To me, it feels as though we’re in another massive shift, this time not industrial but digital, and again the sublime feels harder to come by.
When I refer to the sublime I’m not just talking about epic landscapes or priceless art. I believe that sublime moments that fill us with awe or deep emotion exist within the our everyday lives. In “The Sublime in Everyday Life: Psychoanalytic and Aesthetic Perspectives”, the authors use both psychoanalytic theory and aesthetic philosophy to argue that moments of the sublime are not limited to grand or extraordinary events, but can emerge in routine life through intense emotional or perceptual experiences (2021). I agree, and believe that there are moments of sublime hidden in everyday life that can only be appreciated or potentially even noticed by being totally present. I think these moments of sublime can exist in the laughter shared around a dinner table with friends, in the awe of impossibly intricate architecture, in the surge of euphoria when the lights and music align perfectly and your whole body responds, or even when a largely unplanned mono print comes out of the press better than you could have imagined. Well I guess maybe you could argue that a few of these are art but they’re not distant romantic landscapes. They’re personal, immediate, and grounded in the now.
I believe these sublime moments are available to all of us, only if we’re paying attention and increasingly, I fear we’re missing them. We’re buried in our screens, caught in the loop of capturing, filtering, and posting rather than simply experiencing. The instinct is to document rather than dwell. The sublime asks for presence.
Okay, confession time: while writing this, I’ve checked my phone at least twenty times.
I’m not proud of it, but I know I’m not the only one. Guiao (2024: 146) puts it perfectly when they say ‘today’s internet is basically one large game. If the mechanisms that make games so addictive are being implemented widely online without checks and balances, will we become a society of screen addicts? Or are we already?’ And honestly, I think we already are.
Our attention has become a commodity. Tech companies profit by pulling us from one app to the next, keeping us hooked with carefully designed algorithms. I’ll go to check an email and then find myself lost in a TikTok spiral and twenty minutes can vanish without me even noticing. In 2016 ‘R U OK?' Conducted a survey researching average screen times and found that the average respondents ‘spent an average of 46 hours a week looking at a screen, but just six hours with family and friends.’ (Bullen J and Tarasov A 2016). Nine years on, I can only imagine that number has grown.
It’s not just about time, it’s also about how we experience the world. I fear too much screen time has real consequences. Studies link excessive digital use with rising levels of anxiety, depression, and stress. Meanwhile, spending time in nature is consistently associated with better mental wellbeing (Dayo et al., 2023).
Curated feeds and comment sections can create a world in which performativity is heightened (Guiao, 2024). Sometimes it feels as though the internet has become a stage, and we have become actors performing versions of ourselves for our audience of followers. Our phones are now not just a communication device, but an instantaneous recording and editing studio for our lives. Every moment now has the potential to become digital content. It's no wonder we have become an increasingly anxious society.
Perhaps one of the most insidious aspects of digital immersion is how easily we romanticise the evolution of technology itself. Vincent Mosco calls this the “digital sublime”, a sense of awe and wonder surrounding things like the internet, virtual reality, and cyberspace. It’s this almost mythic view of digital tech that makes us forget there are economic, political, and social forces at play (Mosco, 2020). I think we get so caught up in the limitless potential that we stop asking deeper questions: Are we truely benefiting? And what are we sacrificing?
This is something I explore in my work, the tension between the natural world and the digital one, between presence and distraction, between real connection and curated content. I’m fascinated by how screens can both capture and fragment our attention.
My current work is an invitation. I want viewers to not just look at my prints, but to look up and away from screens and to reconnect with the real world around them.
In order to do this I have been creating a series of square mono prints that depict semi abstract natural senes that are interrupted by brightly coloured geometric shapes, a reference for digital interference. It’s my way of showing how the digital world disrupts connection to nature and the real world.
This project was sparked by what artist and researcher Patricia Townsend calls moments of "Pre- Sense." These are sudden, unexplainable bursts of inspiration, flashes of memory, fragments of thought, or powerful emotional states that feel like they come from nowhere. Sometimes, they lead straight to making. Other times, they linger in the background until I’m ready to turn them into something tangible (Townsend, 2019). I had one of these moments while watching a sunset behind a stage screen at an outdoor music event. My attention was split between the beauty of the sky and the digital display, but the way they interacted created a strange, powerful feeling of sublime.
My work is also deeply rooted in nostalgia and longing. I often find myself revisiting fragments of my childhood and reflecting on how they intersect with who I am now, and who I hope to be. I’ve been influenced by Ziesmann’s (2020) research. She explores how contemporary artists use memory and nostalgia to critique modernity, reflect on cultural shifts, and reclaim identity. Her work reminds me that nostalgia isn’t just about looking back, and that it can also be be a powerful lens for understanding the present.
I think moments of the sublime imprint themselves in our memory with a kind of clarity, and when we experience something similar later on, it can trigger deep feelings of nostalgia. This series is
inspired by those moments or times in my life that have felt overwhelmingly beautiful or emotional, that have stayed with me as warm, vivid memories and continue to shape how I see the world.
Affect theory plays a big role in my creative process, especially when it comes to choosing and experimenting with colour. I'm really interested in how different colour combinations and aesthetic elements can trigger a feeling (Johannes and Ernst, 1973). Artist and theorist O’Sullivan talks about how art isn’t just about interpretation or symbolic meaning. He believes it also works through affect, those sensory, bodily responses that hit us before we even have a chance to put them into words or thoughts (O’Sullivan, 2001). I really connect with that idea. I want my work to make people feel something before they start trying to figure out what it means. For me, the sensory experience should come first. That’s why every element of my work is intentional and considered, I believe the smallest change can completely shift how an artwork feels. I also work very intuitively and follow the affect that materials have on me as I create. Hardman explores how intuition plays a vital role in the creative process, describing it as a fluid, emotionally driven, and deeply perceptive mode of knowing that can be cultivated to enhance artistic and design practices (Hardman 2011). I think creative intuition is an important catalyst in creating work that affects a vewier.
I also find inspiration in Barbara Bolt, an Australian academic, theorist, and practicing artist. She encourages artists to really pay attention to the materials they work with, to engage with their unique qualities instead of just using them to serve an idea (Bolt, 2007). I definitely agree that materials have their own kind of agency; they have the ability to guide, resist, and influence the artistic process. In my practice, I like to explore the properties of different media and experiment with new ways of using them. I don’t just see materials as tools, I try to push their limits and find unexpected methods that reveal new possibilities. I see the creation of an artwork as a kind of collaboration between the artist and the materials. Since reading bolts ‘Material Thinking and the Agency of Matter’, I’ve noticed that embracing the unpredictable side of materials often leads to more interesting results.
Of course, even with all the intention in the world, how a work affects someone is always going to be subjective. I might create something that, to me, feels peaceful and calm, but to someone else it might come across as energetic or even chaotic, and that’s art! it’s open to interpretation and always will be. As artists, all we can do is create with purpose, put the work out there, and let others experience it in their own way.
So, where does all this leave us?
What I’m trying to say is that in a world that’s increasingly loud, fast, and screen-saturated, we need to fight to make space for stillness and presence. I’m not calling for a total rejection of the digital, I’d be a hypocrite (incidentally I’m still battling the urge to check my phone as I type this), but instead a conscious return to noticing, feeling, and dwelling.
Through my printmaking practice, I’m trying to carve out that space (pun intended), to create artworks that interrupt the scroll and invite people to look around. I’m asking myself, and you, what it means to be truly present in a distracted world. What does it look like to reconnect with the sublime, not just in epic mountaintop sunsets or grand art galleries, but in the gentle rhythms of everyday life?
I believe these special moments matter. Choosing to slow down and pay attention is a small act of resistance against the commodification of our attention.
The irony of writing a blog is not lost on me, in fact it’s purely intentional. Thanks for reading.
Don’t forget to comment, like, and subscribe!
Sally Barlow (2025)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bolt B (2007) ‘Material Thinking and the Agency of Matter’, Studies in Material Thinking,Vol 1: 1-4
Bullen J and Tarasov A (2016) Australians spend eight times more hours on screens than with loved ones: survey, ABC Website, accessed 27 May 2025. https://www.abc.net.au/news/ 2016-08-11/australians-spend-46-hours-per-week-with-screens-six-with-family/7718930.
Deyo A, Wallace J and Kidwell KM (2023) ‘Screen time and mental health in college students: Time in nature as a protective factor’, Journal of American College Health, 72(8):1–8, doi:https://doi.org/ 10.1080/07448481.2022.2151843.
Gaitanidis A & Curk, P (2021)The Sublime in Everyday Life: Psychoanalytic and Aesthetic Perspectives,Oxford: Routledge,DOI: 10.4324/9780429260728.
Guiao, Jordan. Disconnect : Why We Get Pushed to Extremes Online and How to Stop It, Monash University Publishing, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/ detail.action?docID=30194371.
Hardman T, 2011. Understanding Creative Intuition , De arte, vol.46, no.83, pp.22-32
Johannes I and Ernst VH (1973) The art of color : the subjective experience and objective rationale of color, New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold : John Wiley.
O’Sullivan S (2001) ‘The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking Art Beyond Representation.’ Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 125–135.
Own words from studio proposal and annotated bibliography.
Oxford English Dictionary (2012) Sublime - adjective and noun- , OED website, accessed 25 May 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/sublime_adj?tl=true
Townsend P (2019) Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist’s Process, Routledge. Wordsworth W and Heaney S (N/A) William Wordsworth: Poems Selected By Seamus Heaney, N/
A, Faber, N/A.
Ziesmann H (2020) Revival: Memory and Nostalgia in Contemporary Art [Masters theses], Arizona State University, accessed 13 April 2025, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global database.