Art by Sarnia

Sarnia de la Maré (b. Helensburgh, Scotland) grew up across Singapore, Malaya, England, and South Africa in a naval family. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art and is an alumna of the Futures Venture Foundation. She maintains a studio practice between London and Paris and writes every day for worldwide publications. Current projects include moving image art at AURA Digital, illustrating weekly series Book of Immersion, and taking long walks to observe and photograph the natural environment.

Press Release Artist Sarnia de la Maré launches provocative selfie-art series exploring performance, femininity, and fractured identity

Press Release

For Immediate Release
Artist Sarnia de la Maré unveils a feminist triptych-in-progress: self-portraiture, satire, and the fragile stage of modern womanhood

Sarnia de la Maré FRSA has released City Chicks, the third work in her ongoing selfie-art series, joining The Bridesmaid and Tribal Grandmother to form what is emerging as a powerful triptych-in-progress. This body of work places the artist herself at the centre of a conversation about women, performance, and fractured identity in the digital age.

The Bridesmaid (2025) uses Victorian layering techniques and double exposure to create a ghostly, painterly portrait. The work highlights historical erasures of women’s agency while reasserting presence through layered time.
Tribal Grandmother (2025) — in both monochrome and a blue-wash colour version — invokes the matriarchal figure as symbol of wisdom, strength, and continuity. The piece speaks to generational memory and the silencing of elder voices in contemporary culture.
City Chicks (2025) moves into satirical territory. Here, three golden, mirrored figures tread on fragile eggshells while oversized chicks look on. Bleeding toes expose the cost of “walking on eggshells” for public image, while the absurd chick imagery critiques the infantilisation of women and the absurdity of performance.

Together, these three works form the opening act of a broader project that reclaims the selfie as intellectual and artistic rebellion. The repetition of the artist’s own body—mirrored, fractured, reimagined—collapses the divide between artist, subject, and critic, making the work both personal and universal.

The triptych establishes the tone for the larger series-in-progress: an evolving dialogue between history, myth, and satire, with women’s visibility and vulnerability at its core. Collectors now have the opportunity to acquire these works at their inception, as the series expands into a fuller exploration of identity, endurance, and feminist commentary.

City Chicks is now available exclusively through de la Maré’s Saatchi Art store.

About the Artist

Sarnia de la Maré FRSA (also known as iServalan) is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and writer whose work spans visual art, music, and experimental cinema. Her practice often integrates feminist critique, neurodiverse awareness, and environmental commentary.

Press Contact

Visit My Saatchi Gallery

For interviews, images, or further information, please contact:
sarniadelamare@gmail.com

City Chicks, Photography from tthe Selfie Art Series by Sarnia de la Maré FRSA

City Chicks by iServalan (Sarnia de la Mare) hand altered photo #selfieart #digitalart #women

Image Description

The artwork, titled City Chicks, presents a surreal, layered digital collage featuring three mirrored self-portraits of the artist. Each figure wears a shimmering gold mini-dress with long, platinum-white braids cascading forward, veiling the face of the central figure. Their tattooed legs dominate the lower half of the composition, extending toward cracked egg yolks that drip against an urban skyline faintly visible in the background. The repetition of the figure creates a sense of rhythm and power, yet their toes press against fragile eggshells, one visibly bleeding, amplifying the tension between strength and vulnerability. The backdrop of oversized chicks introduces irony, tenderness, and contrast—softness against steel, innocence against performance.

City Chicks – Walking on Eggshells in a Golden Age of Performance

In my latest work, City Chicks, I explore the fragile dance women perform to maintain their public image in a world still shaped by male expectations.

The piece is a digital manipulation of full-body self-portraits, multiplied and mirrored into a striking tableau. Three versions of myself stand in shimmering gold dresses, platinum braids veiling the central figure’s face. Beneath, tattooed legs extend toward cracked egg yolks—symbols of fragility and pressure. One set of toes bleeds, revealing the cost of walking on eggshells in plain sight.

The backdrop juxtaposes innocence with irony: oversized chicks dominate the scene, their softness at odds with the sharpness of the imagery. They playfully underscore how femininity is often infantilised—sweet, harmless, decorative—even while women are expected to endure and perform with grace.

The city skyline lingers faintly in the background: a reminder that this performance takes place on a public stage. Women in contemporary culture are asked to be endlessly adaptable—visible yet controlled, bold but never threatening. The repetition of my own figure mirrors this demand for constant reinvention, as though one version is never enough.

City Chicks is not simply a self-portrait. It is feminist commentary, irony, and personal myth all layered together. The yolk becomes a metaphor for wasted potential, for fragility beneath the gloss, for the impossible perfection women are asked to maintain.

This work speaks to collectors of contemporary feminist art, those interested in self-portraiture, and anyone who recognises the absurd performance demanded of women in modern society. It is both visually striking and conceptually challenging—at once satirical and sincere.

✨ City Chicks is available now through my Saatchi store.

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Tribal Grandmother: How Colour and Monochrome Transform the Same Portrait

Tribal Grandmother: Between Electric Reverie and Monochrome Memory

She stands at the edge of two worlds — one drenched in colour like a fevered dream, the other stripped bare to shadow and breath. The wind moves through her feathers. The shore hums beneath her feet. She is myth, she is memory, she is the witness and the storyteller.

The Tribal Grandmother portraits exist in two worlds — one bathed in hallucinatory colour, the other carved from shadow and light. Both hold the same figure, the same costuming, the same gaze — and yet they tell entirely different stories.

In the colour with blue wash edition, the coastal flora background — photographed on a recent nature shoot — bursts into a surreal palette of electric blues, magentas, and violets. It’s an almost impossible colourscape, part coral reef, part alien dream. Against it, the Victorian-inspired costume of layered feather petals and voluminous tulle becomes a luminous apparition. The tattoos along the figure’s legs feel like living hieroglyphs, each mark glowing with amplified energy. This version is spectacle: an immersion into saturated wonder, where every element hums with intensity.

The monochrome edition strips away the vibrancy, allowing the image to breathe in a quieter register. Here, the details sharpen — the grain of the feathers, the shadows caught in the folds of tulle, the interplay of skin and ink. Without colour’s distraction, the scene becomes ceremonial, even confrontational. It feels older, heavier, as though it belongs to an archive of portraits from a parallel past. The mood shifts from dreamlike to deliberate; from a celebration of visual abundance to a study in poise and presence.

Together, these works reveal the power of palette in shaping narrative. The colour version seduces; the monochrome holds you still. Both contain the same woman — an archetype standing between myth and memory — yet each delivers her in a different emotional language.

Photograph, Tribal Grandmother Sarnia Photography

The Bridesmaid, Altered hand painted digital photogaraph by Sarnia de la Maré

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A post shared by iServalan (@sarniadelamare)

The Bridesmaid by Sarnia de la Maré is a surreal bridal portrait in mixed media digital portrait Victorian style. It uses double exposure effect from layers of fine art and contemporary bridal artwork to create a surreal self-portrait photography.

The Bridesmaid
Mixed Media Digital Portrait by Sarnia de la Maré

The Bridesmaid reimagines the timeless role of the wedding attendant through a surreal, dreamlike lens. This self-portrait draws on Victorian hand-painting techniques once used to enhance and romanticise early photographs, now reinterpreted in a digital medium.

The process began with a base photographic portrait, which was digitally “hand painted” to soften features, heighten colour, and add painterly depth, echoing the delicate brushwork of 19th-century studio artists. Two public domain images—a bridal figure and a pastoral landscape—were then overlaid using double-exposure styling, allowing them to merge seamlessly into the composition. The bridal figure appears both within and upon the subject, creating an uncanny interplay between identity and archetype.

White braided hair frames the composition like an ornamental border, while gold-embroidered fabric recalls the opulence of vintage ceremonial attire. The glowing glasses act as a portal into the layered imagery, making the viewer question where one image ends and another begins. The result is a haunting yet celebratory vision, where the modern self-portrait is refracted through history, memory, and ritual.

The Sarnia de la mAré Art Gallery, buy or view beautiful artworks with Place in Your Room App

Sarnia de la Maré Gallery on Saatchi Art – Explore in 3D Virtual Room

The Sarnia de la Maré Gallery at Saatchi Art – A World of Creativity at Your Fingertips

The Sarnia de la Maré Gallery, hosted on Saatchi Art, offers art collectors and enthusiasts the opportunity to explore an ever-evolving portfolio of original works from one of today’s most eclectic and forward-thinking artists. Known for a creative practice that spans fine art, illustration, eco-conscious design, and cinematic visual storytelling, Sarnia de la Maré’s work is as much about narrative as it is about visual impact.

Sarnia de la Maré Gallery on Saatchi Art, An Immersive Online Experience

Saatchi Art’s advanced digital platform ensures that every piece in the collection is presented with exceptional clarity, giving viewers the chance to appreciate each detail—from delicate brushwork to bold compositional structures. A highlight of the experience is Saatchi Art’s 3D Virtual Room app, which allows collectors to preview artworks to scale in their own space before making a purchase. Using augmented reality technology, the app offers an accurate, true-to-life impression of how each piece will look in situ—whether it’s a striking centrepiece for a living room or a statement work for a corporate space.

Curated for Collectors and Interior Designers

The gallery features a carefully curated selection of Sarnia de la Maré’s creations, ranging from contemporary mixed-media compositions and painterly illustrations to limited-edition prints. Each piece is chosen not only for its artistic merit but also for its ability to enrich and transform a space. For interior designers, architects, and collectors alike, the Sarnia de la Maré Gallery on Saatchi Art offers a direct connection to work that combines artistic depth with enduring visual appeal.

Global Access, Personal Service

Through the Saatchi Art platform, clients benefit from secure worldwide shipping, professional framing options, and a dedicated art advisory service. Whether purchasing an original or commissioning a bespoke piece, collectors can expect a seamless process with the artist’s vision and the client’s preferences at its heart.

Discover the full collection and experience the 3D Virtual Room app today at: Sarnia de la Maré Gallery on Saatchi Art.

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