Flora, fauna and the female form
This week we welcome Sasha Lynn Roberts, an artist born and raised in Brooklyn. Roberts’ artwork is steeped in curiosity about nature, and how it relates to the feminine experience. After taking years to study nature in Oahu, her art challenges the notion of making oneself smaller, by painting surreal landscapes on recycled materials –paralleling her perspective as a Black woman toward the beauty of the earth and ocean.
Roberts honed her craft at two universities; NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Hunter College, where she learned how to blend her interest in media and interaction with illustration. Remarkably, she completed her bachelor’s degree in Interactive Media Arts in two years, culminating her academic journey at the age of 19.
When she was 13, a charcoal still life by Roberts was featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual PSART competition. In 2019, a conté crayon self-portrait was also displayed at the Met. In 2021, her piece, Gaia, adorned a Brooklyn billboard for a year as part of the Whistling in the Dark group exhibition focused on climate change. Following an argument between Roberts and Kanye West, the rapper commissioned a digital painting, Good Art, that appeared in London for Boomer Gallery’s The Dark Side Biennial, as well as in Los Angeles for Delaney George’s group exhibition, Indelible Imprints.
In March 2025, Roberts was selected by the American Savings Bank’s Loi Gallery as a spotlight artist for oceanic digital illustrations, where 20% of her sales were contributed to a nonprofit dedicated to uplifting Hawaiian voices. That same month, Roberts was selected as a live painter for Los Angeles Fashion Week, and in September of that year, she would live paint once more during New York Fashion week. In October 2025, she would assist artist Blythe Yoshikane and the Hawaii Department of Transportation in painting the largest mural in Hawai’i to date – the Waipio Highway Mural on Kamehameha Highway. Roberts’ work has been praised and shared by artists such as Cardi B, Kehlani, Kanye West, Rico Nasty, Tierra Whack and Sevdaliza.
Roberts is a surrealist painter with a focus on portraits of Black women. Her artistic practice embraces interaction and experimentation with her medium. She begins each piece through digital compositing with her own photographs as a base, using Procreate and Photoshop to develop thumbnails. These serve as the map for her acrylic paintings on recycled wood, veneers and canvas creating textured upcycled pieces.
Another core element of her practice is lenticular art: art that changes as the viewer moves, or requires the audience to interact with the artwork to reveal multiple frames. For lenticular shutters, Roberts hand carves wooden blinds and paint images on each side, inviting viewers to physically flip the blinds to engage with the work and reveal a story behind the art. Roberts’ door-hinge paintings are made by fusing canvas boards around a door hinge, to create a “hidden canvas” that is pushed into a floater frame. Audiences can “open” and “close” the piece to see the two paintings within. These tactile interactions mirror her focus on the concept of changing perspective. Through color, movement and materiality, Roberts crafts immersive visual experiences that blur the line between observer and participant.
See more of Roberts’ work on her website and Instagram.
