We want to hear how Sabrina's work has influenced your life and your creative work! Maybe Spilling Open was your coming-of-age companion, or maybe you've attended one of Sabrina's inspiring workshops or online classes.  Tell us your stories and we'd love to share some of them in the upcoming 25th anniversary companion edition of Spilling Open. ​

My Battle with Early Onset Parkinson’s Disease

Sabrina Ward Harrison published her first book, Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself, at the age of 23. Written between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, Spilling Open was an intimate and moving picture of the contradictions young women face as they are asked to grow into societal norms of femininity.  Her tender honesty and singular aesthetic energy turned Harrison into the voice of a generation.  

Though she went on to publish four more books, to call Harrison an author isn’t accurate. Books were certainly her unique way to distribute the work, but her practice has always begun in her compositions. Harrison’s canvases – whether the pages of a book or a wood paneled painting – appear effortless; flowing bold, singular marks pivot and plot across colored fields of energy.  These saturated areas of color, hand written words and beautifully worked surfaces, create a combination of iconography that is immediately recognizable and Harrison’s own.

Marked by repetition, intuition, and cultural references – as well as an endurance of symbolism and diaristic expression – means there is an undeniable continuity in the vocabulary of Harrison’s work. But it is the bravery in laying herself bare that brings an edge to the work that is also at once palpable and undeniably powerful.  Central to Harrison’s practice is her exploration of the most intimate of experiences in universal form. Harrison’s oeuvre explores questions about love, faith, and identity, embracing the pain and pleasure of living.  Her conscious mark-making results in reasoned surfaces that are balanced between purposeful text and powerful imagery.  

Harrison is the creator of 5 groundbreaking published books; the first one, Spilling Open, was published when she was 23. She has gone onto publish, Brave on the Rocks, Messy Thrilling Life, The True and The Questions and The Story is Happening. Sabrina was born in Montreal Canada and moved to California with her family at 9. She went onto study photography and graphic design at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
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She has taught creativity worldwide for 2 decades with a belief she holds strong to, that, "we must create what we most need to find"  In 2018 she founded True Living Experience a multidisciplinary production and educational studio. 
She is renown for her in-depth online teaching experiences, UNTETHER: Creative awakening,   FULL COLOR LIFE: Getting into your deep creative flow and LIBERATE: Publishing the book that is within you.
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After living many years in California and NYC, she has created home with her husband, Sean and pup, Clementine in the Southern Wisconsin countryside.