​Dive Deep into Gullah Culture at Sabree’s Gallery of the Arts
By Chantel Britton

​Sabree was part of a huge family, with fourteen siblings, plus an additional six brothers and sisters who were stillborn, for a total of twenty-one children. The three hundred acre farm that her and her family worked grew not only cotton, but also corn, tobacco, and any kind of vegetable that you can imagine.

Showing artistic aptitude as a child, she ultimately went to school for art, but found herself minoring in education and initially working as a teacher rather than as an artist.

​The painting, titled "The Risk of the Roots," depicts “the Obama family as children, all of them as children,” described Sabree.

“The youngest daughter is sitting in the top of the tree, and she has made a home, so she’ll be the one to preserve the Gullah culture. She’ll pass along that knowledge.”

Malia Obama, the elder daughter, is shown gathering moss for the aforementioned medicinal uses. The Spanish moss in the painting is the actual plant affixed to the canvas, a technique the artist frequently uses in her works.

​“Michelle Obama…in her hand, she has a bowl container of rice,” she continued. “And in the Gullah culture, we’ve got a thing for rice!

“And [Barack] Obama, he’s sitting on the root, but yet he’s a part of the root.”

Finally, above Michelle’s head is a beehive, meant to point towards the declining world’s bee population and the notion that “if the bees die, we die,” says the artist.

“And so the risk of the root, which is the name of the piece, the risk that the ancestors took in order to get us here, was a heavy burden to bear.”

Sabree takes her ancestral legacy as the bearer of such a burden very seriously. As she did growing up on the farm, she still wakes up around 4 a.m. every morning, often spending the whole day painting and at the gallery. In addition to her visual creations, she utilizes her social media accounts to pass along facts and history about the Gullah culture and history. It’s both an obligation and a pleasure.

'Embracing Liberty' by Sabree
“It is a big responsibility, but I’m going to tell you something: I enjoy it,” the painter asserted. “It’s another form of teaching. As the old saying goes, once a teacher, always a teacher.”

Learn more about Sabree at www.SabreesGallery.com and @SabreesGallery on Instagram. Her gallery space in Savannah’s City Market is at 309 West Julian Street in Studio 4 upstairs.

Local Savannah Artist Patricia Sabree is preserving her roots and honoring her family one stroke at a time.
Patricia is a Gullah Artist, and specializes in this form of art that has been traced back to Western Africa over 400 years ago.

Gullah Art, also known as "Happy Art", combines both rich African history with southern roots.

Although originating in Western Africa, Gullah Art has influences in Haitian, Jamaican and Spanish Art.

Patricia says preserving history through all her hard work and dedication is what Gullah is truly about,
"it is my way of preservation, saying thank you to my ancestors and also my way of carrying on the legacy for all those like my parents and brothers and sisters.
​
Patricia and her daughter have written a book entitled "Pass The Path". It is written in both English and native Gullah, and she hand painted every page. She says every painting is full of vibrant colors and tells a story of the fusion of African and Southern cultures.