It could be said that Cape Cod is in Sarah Hinckley’s bones. Born and raised in Cummaquid, she has an ancestral lineage on the Cape dating back to the mid 1630s. She started painting at a young age and never considered a different path, studying art at Tufts University, the Museum School in Boston and Columbia University, earning her M.F.A.

Growing up on the Cape surrounded by nature has influenced her work and you find traces of it woven into her abstract compositions and fields of color. Hinckley’s paintings come out of the American Abstract Expressionist tradition and Color Field movement, but it’s evident that the light and colors of the area inspire her. “It helps that I live here on the Cape, where I’m exposed to every color there is—all the sky and water and open space,” she says.

Hinckley works in oil on canvas or watercolor and gouache on paper, dividing her time between the two mediums and maintaining a separate workspace for each. She explains that it’s not just different techniques, “They represent a different kind of thought process.” 

At Hinckley’s oil-painting studio in Yarmouth Port, canvases line the walls in various states of completion so she can study their progress. Industrial work tables are filled with her color studies, paint tubes and brushes of all shapes and sizes. Viewing her work in progress, you can see the formal aspects of her technique that make up a finished painting. Each layer with its shapes, marks, brushwork, opaque and translucent colors along with drips and paint marks.

It’s clear that the artist’s work is a place of curiosity, where she explores thoughts and ideas. By adding and painting over elements, building up lines, drips, shapes and colors, her finished piece tells a story and has a history. She points out that the sides of the painting often reveal that story and glimpses of it remain visible on the surface too. In fact, many of Hinckley’s clients do not frame her work, as the sides of the painting invite the viewer to engage. 

She describes her oil painting process, pointing to a nearby canvas, “I started this one in 2021 and finished it in 2024. Painting is a dialogue between the artist and the painting and a lot of listening and patience goes into it. Sometimes, there is a long wait to see where that conversation takes me.” It’s easy to see how much fun she has with her work; each canvas features several layers of paint as she tries
out different techniques. “It’s all a balancing act,” she reflects. 

Nature is a great influencer of her work, and one can see this interwoven into the colors and shapes populating her canvasses. A certain curve might allude to a flower or a tree, or reflect the vastness of the water at high tide or perhaps all of the shapes of a sand marsh.  “If someone can utilize their imagination—if a dialogue begins in their head when they see a painting, I’ve accomplished what I set out to do—it’s all about engagement,” she says. 

Hinckley’s other studio, dedicated to watercolors, is a detached barn situated in her abundant and serene garden. Inside, her watercolors are pinned to bulletin boards and CDs line the walls. These paintings are intense and colorful with spontaneous brushwork on hand-cut paper. It seems a world apart from the studied approach to her oil paintings but clearly from the same artist, painting with intent. She says, “Simple forms of beauty can easily be overlooked in an ever-changing and challenging world. Striving to make something beautiful out of my own vocabulary feels imperative.” 

To find more of Sarah Hinckley’s work and art, visit her website, sarahhinckley.com.