Sarah Finnigan Talks With Anime Herald at Illuxcon

Note: Due to time constraints, this will be published on Anime Herald's main site on July 21, 2025. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Anime Herald: Pick any piece you want, and tell us how you did it and what the idea was.

Sarah Finnigan: I can tell you about my most recent piece, Concurrence. I did a painting a couple of years ago, Curvature. At the time I did it because I always had a passion for astronomy. We started watching some videos with the kids. They were on an astronomy kick.

A lot of the pieces I do are personal, I have something more to it. I just wanted to paint this (Curvature). But then the black holes just kept coming back up in my sketchbooks. I’d sit in my living room and watch these things that were incredibly destructive, with the birds chirping outside.

These things, it’s silly to think of them as being completely separate from us. As if they might as well be dragons, or time travel. But they’re real. They’re only separated from us by distance. We can go outside right now and point to one of the dozens that we know of. We don’t know dozens of planets with life. At this moment we could assume we’re the more improbable thing.

I love the contrast of thinking about how alien, strange, scary, and extreme a black hole is. We have the more unique experience that is normal to us. I wanted to make a painting where I could explore that contrast. Of all the landscapes I could think of that were really serene and peaceful, I love the idea of a hilltop town calming down for the night, as the sun’s gone down, and putting those together. Not in a narrative sense of, “Oh no, our town is being ripped apart!”

Having these things coexist in a way that seems impossible. But we do. We live in a universe where these incredibly enormous, incredibly dense things exist. Even now, we owe our comfort to living in the gravity well of a star.

Anime Herald: It does look like tough times for that town, but I can appreciate it.

What is your origin story as an artist?

Sarah Finnigan: I started doing art in college, because I gave up gaming and had a lot of free time. By the time I was done I knew I wanted to do art, but was not in a position to do it. So I left and did a desk job for nine years, and saved up so that I could transition. In 2019, I quit my day job and took a year to build my portfolio. I came to Illuxcon and showed my work in the showcase.

I got approached by Wizards of the Coast. I started doing stuff for a couple of galleries. Things took off because I presented here. So, I hold this show in very high esteem for what it can do in connecting people and showing your work.

Anime Herald: How did you first connect with the show to get into the showcase to begin with?

Sarah Finnigan: I think that if you participate online in this community, a lot of people talk about it. I came once in 2014, so it had obviously been a while since I had. It was a priority, because I was now doing traditional art. Which I started doing traditional art because, as a digital artist, I was blown away seeing art in person for the first time. It set me off on a path. “Alright, I gotta set aside the Photoshop and get my hands dirty.”

Anime Herald: How many years of training did it take for you to get to the point where you could paint like this? Such a liquid style.

Sarah Finnigan: I started doing traditional painting in 2017 and quit my day job in 2019, so about two years.

Anime Herald: That is a phenomenal story. Thank you for sharing it.

Sarah Finnigan: Thank you.