Sara Steele is one of America's most widely recognised and lauded watercolourists. Her paintings range from dramatic images of flowers and evocative still lifes to expansive abstractions and ethereal landscapes. Her palate is intense and the dialogue she establishes with her subjects is bold and expressive. This book marks the midpoint of the artist's career, and celebrates 30 years of painting. As a retrospective survey, this new book is an invaluable reference picturing over 220 paintings from throughout Steele's career. In addition, through extensive personal interviews, we meet the artist in her studio and explore her thinking about Art, ecology, painting, cats, and the healing forces of nature. This is a vivid collection of remarkable paintings.

Artist Sara Steele is widely recognized for her dramatic watercolors of flowers, vivid still lifes, expansive abstractions, and ethereal landscapes. In the summer of 2005, the artist will celebrate thirty years of painting with a mid-career retrospective hosted by the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art. Sara Steele, Blueprints for Paradise accompanies the exhibition. In addition to serving as the catalog for the retrospective, the book includes an extended survey of Ms. Steele's work covering some 250 paintings. It also introduces the artist and explores her work through an extended interview, a biographical sketch, and in essays that examine the influence of Chinese thought on Ms. Steele's work, consider the natural world in relation to her paintings, and discuss how Ms. Steele's paintings come into being. "In the presence of work by Sara Steele, it is difficult to move away," writes Anne Mugler. "The color and form allow our eyes little choice but to train their sight on her paintings. We are startled by and drawn into the vision in front of us."