This article spotlights Sarelyn Wager, a 97-year-old artist living in Mill Valley. She turns life at the Redwoods senior living community into a timeless studio.
Surrounded by portraits of neighbors, staff, and visiting musicians, Wager’s work blends decades of study with a knack for capturing candid moments. From her Mill Valley studio to the benches along Fairfax Avenue, her paintings offer a Marin County perspective on aging, travel, and the enduring power of portraiture.
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Spotlight on a Marin Studio Artist
Sarelyn Wager fills her Redwoods studio with portraits that feel almost like conversations paused in color. She often uses candid photos snapped on her phone—people eating, looking away, or gesturing in mid-sentence.
The subjects sometimes discover they’ve been painted only after a piece hangs in the dining room or another communal space in Mill Valley. With more than eight decades of painting experience, Wager has leaned into more figurative portraiture in recent years.
She still explores jewelry making and quick sketches on the side. Her artistic journey began in youth, with weekend classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and later study at UCLA.
Influences include teachers like Rico Lebrun and artists such as Picasso and Pierre Bonnard. In her early days, she sketched people at the Los Angeles farmers market on Third Street and at Fairfax, observing a wide cross-section of Southern California life.
Now in Marin, age has shifted her process—she sits to paint and often works on smaller pieces. Her devotion to art remains unshaken, and honestly, that kind of commitment is rare.
Travel has also left a deep imprint. Wager’s paintings have drawn inspiration from journeys to Uzbekistan, Bhutan, China, Europe, and even North Korea’s Mass Games.
Her daughter, Jain Wager, praises Sarelyn for her ability to tap into the soul of her subjects. Sarelyn has shared artistic masters and techniques with students and fellow artists alike.
She has shown work in Southern California and exhibited in her own gallery. Now, Sarelyn hopes to bring Marin’s own art audience into sharper focus, with more opportunities to exhibit within Marin County itself.
Roots: From Los Angeles markets to Marin imagination
Even before settling in Mill Valley, Sarelyn’s eye for human portraits was sharpened by a lifetime of observing real people in real settings. Her LA roots run through her work, from the Third Street and Fairfax farmer’s market sketches to the bustling studios she visited while refining technique at Chouinard.
That early immersion in a street-level cross-section of society remains evident in the way she composes faces, gestures, and the informal rhythm of everyday life. You can see it in the way she captures people mid-thought, or in the casual tilt of a head.
Travel and technique shaping the artist
Wager’s travel history isn’t just a passport-stamped list; it’s a gallery of atmospheres. Uzbekistan’s colors, Bhutan’s quiet landscapes, the tactile textures of China, and the grand theater of Europe—and the choreographed mass performances of North Korea—have each left distinctive traces in her brushwork.
As she ages into a more intimate, seated approach, she translates those expansive experiences into smaller canvases. These pieces pull viewers into a moment, a memory, or a soft conversation—sometimes you just want to linger there a bit longer.
A Marin connection: Exhibitions, Community, and Legacy
Sarelyn lives in Mill Valley, and her art keeps weaving itself into Marin’s cultural scene. Her daughter mentions Sarelyn’s knack for teaching about artistic masters and techniques, all while quietly showing what real craft looks like.
Sarelyn has exhibited in Southern California and even at her own gallery. Still, she’s got her sights set on Marin for more exposure—she talks about venues in San Rafael, Novato’s Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (MCMA), and spots around Sausalito, Tiburon, and San Anselmo as possibilities for new shows.
- Subject matter rooted in community—neighbors, staff, visiting musicians
- A life of study and dialogue—from Chouinard and UCLA to Picasso and Bonnard
- Travel-informed technique—colors, textures, and compositional sensibilities from around the world
- Marin-ready ambition—seeking more regional exhibitions to share her portraiture with San Rafael, San Anselmo, and Novato audiences
For folks in Marin, Sarelyn Wager’s work shows that age doesn’t have to quiet an artist’s voice—it can make it ring out even more. In Mill Valley’s dining rooms and Redwoods’ galleries, her portraits ask us to slow down and notice the stories in a face, a gesture, or a conversation. Maybe that’s what gives them a place in Marin’s art history.
Here is the source article for this story: Artist captures life in Mill Valley senior living community
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