Meet Sara Carter: The Austin Abstract Painter Translating Love Into Color
For nearly four decades, Sara Carter has channeled universal energy into abstract works that pulse with color, emotion and love
Love sits at the center of Sara Carter’s work — not as metaphor, but as its mission. The Austin-based abstract painter has exhibited everywhere from San Francisco, New Orleans and Houston to international exhibitions in Antwerp and the United Kingdom, each canvas a deliberate transmission for what she calls “the organizing principle of everything.” For nearly 40 years, Carter has maintained an unwavering conviction about her artistic purpose: to offer the most powerful force in the universe through paint on canvas.
Her Path to Painting
Born in Houston, Carter first felt the pull to her artistic practice as early as preschool. “I have always known that art is my superpower,” she says. Carter followed her passion and evident talent, enrolling in San Francisco Art Institute in her late twenties. Within six months of graduating, Graystone Gallery picked her up where she exhibited for twelve years. She later worked with Edward Cella Art and Architecture in Los Angeles in 2015, where she first met David De Boer. When the gallery shifted direction five years later, De Boer — who had always wanted to start his own gallery — opened his spaces in LA and Antwerp, bringing Carter with him.
Currently, Carter works from a two-story, light-flooded studio in her West Lake home, where paint-splattered Birkenstocks and canvases lay on the floor tell the story of a practice both physical and metaphysical.
Her Process
Carter is known for large-scale abstractions with vibrant, emotive colors. She treats bold color as a conduit — her way of reaching the viewer. “I am not using color because it’s beautiful,” she explains. “I’m using color conceptually.” Orange versus yellow. Cherry red versus burnt sienna. Each hue fires synapses, invites chemical reactions and connects the physical body to something beyond the tangible. “Anything you put into your eyes is information for your spirit and for the physicality of your neurology.”
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She describes her painting process as cyclical — a continual return to the floor, her body dancing over it as music — from chanting to instrumental to rock and roll — lets something larger than herself take the lead. “I am not the conductor,” she says. “Something else is the conductor, and I am just one of the construction people that makes it happen.”
Her Recent Work
Her recent exhibition “Conversations on Beauty” at Lone Star Light House in East Austin showcased “Stories from the Floor” — works created from the paint-splattered floor she’d photographed for decades. She enlarged tiny sections of these accidental compositions, then recreated them atop fresh canvases, allowing new work to spill and merge onto the floor. An homage to her process and to her belief that nothing is accidental, but the universe guiding her forward.
“My work comes through me and through the desire to be of service,” Carter explains. “I create because it is my larger-than-life exuberance to offer the most powerful thing in the universe, which is love — and I mean the big love that creates everything. The organizing principle of everything is love, and the universe wants you to have it. So here I am.”
Her Future
Looking ahead to spring 2026, Carter has an upcoming exhibition at the De Boer Gallery in Los Angeles and a unique “BITE” installation with Campbell Art Collective in Austin — an immersive dinner experience. Beyond that, she’ll keep painting on the floor and staying true to her purpose: letting love move through her work. After four decades, Carter shows no signs of slowing — only deepening.
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