Sarah Oliphant
American artist and backdrop painter (born 1951)
Sarah Oliphant (born 1951) is an American artist and backdrop painter. She is the founder of Oliphant Studio, a New York City–based atelier specializing in hand-painted photography backdrops. Her work has appeared in major magazines, portrait photography, and museum exhibitions, and she has been profiled by The New York Times and Forbes.
Early life and education
Oliphant, a native of Chester, South Carolina, began creating artwork by attending after-school art lessons starting in the second grade from Lois Brice. Oliphant continued to study privately with Brice throughout high school. She went on to study at the University of South Carolina where she earned a degree in applied art and also took graduate classes in the theater program. She later worked painting scenery for the Virginia Museum Theatre before moving to New York, where she worked as a freelance painter for Off-Broadway productions.
Career
Oliphant hand-paints photorealistic backdrops for fashion photographers and shows. As an artist she created painted backdrops of sky, sea, sand, and city silhouettes for photographic magazine cover shots and advertisements.
Her backdrops have been used in magazines including Time magazine, Vogue and The New York Times Magazine.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q136554381. VIAF identifies the subject as 18157882859760441728. The Library of Congress control number is no2020001077. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sarah Oliphant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.