Sara Gilman

I grew up in Hollywood California. My parents moved there from Alaska. My mother, formerly an actress/assistant director with a hobby of writing screenplays, worked a desk job while my father worked for Disney as an Imagineer most of my life. My mother passed away before my 8th grade year of middle school. Due to my father's job with Disney I spent that year in Japan while he worked on Disney Seas. We came back to California for my first three years of high school and then we were off again to Hong Kong for my senior year.

Riding Cross Country on project horse in Maryland.

Horses were always a huge passion and influence in my life. My mother bought a 4-year-old Arabian, Dustin, when I was also 4. I stayed with him until he passed away at the age of 22 to colic. I was the typical barn-rat growing up and spent all my extra time at the barn and around horses. Naturally they are my favorite and most prominent subject. This interest has been at war with my artist side for years and years. I took several jobs teaching horses, kids, and myself in the equestrian field and it is still my 'default' occupation. At the moment I am blessed with a 10-year-old thoroughbred: The Dúnadan, a.k.a. Strider, who I purchased in Kentucky as a resale project for school funds.

Illustration of Luna.

Fantasy has also played its role. Ever since I was very young I was enamored with fantasy stories, from old fairy tales to my fanatic love of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic tales of Middle Earth. I started role playing when I was just 9 years old, playing on message boards as my most long-lived and prominent character: an albino winged unicorn named Luna. I proceeded on to other games including my dear Canterbury, which started solely as a normal horse game with stallions collecting mares and mares having foals until, after creation of my other prominent character Blackmail, things started to get shaken up. Bringing in Luna to his aid, both started the trend of fantasy that went from just fantastical equines to Gods, Goddesses, dragons, gryphons, elves and more. Canterbury still exists today and it is my ambition (along with my fellow maintainers, players and dear friends: Sunny and Sammie) to make it near as epic as Middle Earth.

 

Illustration of T'eo with his firelizard, Hestia.

Other games I played included the Dragonriders Of Pern-based game Pernworld. The majority of my dragons are based on characters from Pernworld. On that game my starting character was a SeaCrafter (a.k.a. Sailor) named Matteo who impressed to the coppery Bronze Raenth to become T'eo. Along with his sister, Brown Loyauth's Lorena, a quirky Bluerider of Xaventh, A'deo, and the Bronzeriding runner-trainer Ae'ran (Knephyth), they became my outlet for many years and have helped in creating some very inspiring friends, some of whom are also artistic (see Links!)

In this chapter of my life I am embarking on the road to art school! I don't know which yet so wish me luck!