Sarah Bejer escapes from pandemic woes by sharing vivid, creative portraits

Sometimes, late at night, Sarah Bejer’s sleep is disrupted by the muse.

It might be an unfinished acrylic piece. A color pattern that keeps drifting through her mind, a moth in flight, an expressive dog. Once, just once, it was Joe Exotic — but she got him out of her system, just another piece of the artwork that has poured out from her during the time of COVID-19.

 “I can’t sleep so I’m just slinking down the stairs at night and painting a little thing and listening to a podcast,” Bejer said. “Some of the stuff I make, I don’t intend to make it, it’s just in my head and I have to get it out.”

A self-taught artist, Bejer had been dabbling in smaller artwork for a while, selling art for children and other occasional pieces through an Etsy shop since the early 2000s. When the pandemic forced her to work from home and convert her dining room into a home office, she set up a work space with a studio space in the same room.

“It made it so much easier, and I was just doing it all the time,” Bejer said.

Back in the fall, she made some paper watercolor and ink ornaments of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and posted them to Facebook. The five portraits were an instant hit.

“After that, I would just make ornaments for my own entertainment, and people kept buying them,” she said.

These aren’t your child’s construction paper ornaments. Bejer crafts them on heavy watercolor paper and they last — she has some that are 20 years old. 

During December, she found herself posting ornaments to different Grafton groups on Facebook almost daily. She found herself meeting people from Grafton and talking to high school classmates she hadn’t spoken to for a long time.

“It was a nice way to connect with people during this whole pandemic year when I’ve just barely talked to anyone,” she said.

By holidays’ end, she had created more than 200 ornaments — people’s pets, a special order of characters from the movie “Napoleon Dynamite,” David from “Schitt’s Creek,” Dr. Anthony Fauci. 

Once, just once, she painted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer dressed for prom, inspired by the film “My Friend Dahmer.”

“There are some paintings or ornaments that I think this is too weird — who is going to want Jeffrrey Dahmer on their Christmas tree? — and they sell,” Bejer said.

The cost for her work varies. Her 3×5 inch ornaments with ink and watercolor go for $20, with the more labor-intensive acrylic canvases starting at $175.

Pet portraits, her most popular request, require several photos in different poses, possibly with the addition of a name, toy, or sweater. She finds herself painting 90 percent more dogs than cats, but one of her more memorable orders involved a portrait of nine cats — five alive, four dead and wearing halos. 

“There is always a central phase in one of my paintings where I hate it, but I make myself finish and it comes together. It’s like the awkward puberty stage,” she said. “I don’t think I have a signature style, but I tend to gravitate toward something that has distinguishing characteristics.”

Bejer can be found on Facebook, on Etsy, or on Instagram @ziggystardust49.

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