Sara Shakeel — Blinging it!

3 min readMay 15, 2019

Ahead of her London exhibition titled The Great Supper, I met up with the wonderful Sara Shakeel to talk about her journey as an artist and how that has led to her solo show at the Now Gallery at Greenwich Peninsula.

Sara was a wonderful guest and I was impressed that she has achieved so much in so little time, having worked as an artist for less than three years.

The Curator's Salon - The Art Podcast | Sara Shakeel - blinging it | Episode 45

Sara Shakeel is a digital artist who has produced her first major installation at the Now Gallery in Greenwich, London…

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SIX THINGS I LEARNED FROM SARA

She originally trained as a dentist and after failing her exams she took up art as a way to find her way out of the disappointment she was feeling.
After sharing her work on Instagram she found that people were really enjoying her art works which she created digitally using photo editing software. Then someone commented that she was not proficient in Photoshop which til that time was a software she wasnt familiar with. She taught herself to use Photoshop and a year later she was messaged from Adobe HQ who wished to use her images to celebrate their reaching 1m followers on Instagram.
She developed a unique style that looked like crystals over her collages, and had celebrities following her work including Sarah Jessica Parker, and the Swarovski family.
Her career has seen her travelling around the world, recently designing a cover for Grazia Italia, editorial work for Playboy magazine, working with international brands and visiting the Swarovski factory in Austria.
Sara was playing around with physical crystals and covered an egg with them and at the same time imagining her work being developed into larger sculptures. The call from the gallery came a few months later, and she was commissioned to develop the sculptural pieces for the exhibition.
Sara believes that contentment, gratitude and self belief bring the good things. As a spiritual person she understands that these foundations lead to happiness and creativity, and success follows.