Sandi studied art in high school, graduated from Penn State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Art Education and taught art in the Pittsburgh Public Schools before moving to Philadelphia. After her academic training in art school during which she aspired to become a realistic painter, her focus dramatically changed. She fell in love with abstract art..Sandi has been juried into the Centennial exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum by John B. Ravenal, (curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) and awarded an honorable mention by Lisa Tremper Hanover, (former CEO of the Michener Museum.) She participated in the Square Foot Art Basel Miami, the ART Expo in New York, was juried into the The Barrett Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY, and was awarded the Nolan Painting Award at The Main Line Art Center in Haverford, PA. by celebrated artist, Moe Brooker.
She was juried into “Art of the State 2021” at the Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg and was invited by curator Lauren Nye to be part of a duo exhibition at The Susquehanna Art Museum. Sandi paints full time in her studio creating powerful abstractions on canvas and shares her story through her paintings with collectors throughout the country.
ARTIST STATEMENT That gorgeous blue robin’s egg… Yes, that is when I started my journey as an artist. I was only five years old. The color just went through me like a lightning bolt and opened up my passion for color. My box of crayons became my treasure chest. That lightning bolt struck again eleven years later when I saw, in person, an abstract painting by Franz Kline at the Carnegie Museum of Art.
The power and expression of that painting gave me the freedom and permission to see beyond the traditional realism I had been taught and explore and push boundaries I never realized were possible. When I stand in front of a blank canvas I jump down that portal and like “Alice in Wonderland”, experience a world of magic and strange logic full of phantasmal shapes, glowing colors, and glorious marks .They jump from my eyes into my deepest emotions and then to my brush. I paint layers of colors and rhythms that breathe life into my paintings and open up stories for the viewer’s imagination and curiosity.
