Sara Van Vliet | Artist, Adventure Cyclist, & Her Recent Book Combining These Two Passions

Sara Van Vliet is an artist and cyclist who rides long distances not to escape her studio, but to deepen her connection to it. Her work lives in the space where movement, creativity, and attention meet. Drawing, cycling, filming, observing, all of it shaped by curiosity.For a long time, Sara kept her athletic and artistic lives separate. She raced long distance speed skating at a high level while studying at the art academy, moving between two worlds that kept asking her to fully commit to one. She eventually stepped away from competitive sport, but the pull toward physical challenge never really left.Things shifted in the summer of 2024 when she started recording small video vlogs during her solo cycling trips. They were meant for friends and family, but slowly turned into something else. The more she rode, the more she realized that long days on the bike created a kind of mental space she couldn’t access anywhere else.In this conversation, we talk about how cycling became a bridge between two parts of her life that once felt far apart, how documenting her rides turned into a creative tool, and how she’s exploring the connection between the bike and artistic clarity.We also walk through her four-thousand-five-hundred-kilometer solo trip from Antwerp to the North Cape. Forty-six days on the road, averaging one hundred and twenty kilometers a day, and one oil pastel drawing made every night after setting up camp. Those drawings became a record of the journey and a way to understand how repetition, solitude, and consistency shape the way we see.We talk about the quiet moments of long distance travel, the friendships formed on ferries and in campgrounds, and running into the same riders again and again along the edges of Norway. Sara also shares her thoughts on burnout, posting work online, preparing for The Traka, and the next idea she’s considering, which may involve riding from Europe to India for a friend’s wedding! Hope you enjoy this conversation :)Sara on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/doorsaravanvliet/https://www.instagram.com/cafedebedstee/Sarah’s Artwork + Exhibitionshttps://doorsaravanvliet.nlFollow us on Instagram @wanderstudiossIf you enjoyed the episode, leaving a quick Spotify review really helps small shows like ours grow :)Episode 46.