Visiting Artist Lecture: Sarah Sands

Sarah Sands is a painter from California and is currently working for Golden Artist Colors, Inc. She has been working for the acrylic paint company for 8 years. Her earlier work consisted of large painting, average 5’ x 6½’, with oils but after being involved with the company, her paintings shifted to acrylics and made on much a smaller canvas, average 12” x 12”. In the beginning of the lecture, she talked about the start of enlightenment in painting. She lived in Spain for 6 months after undergraduate school and saw what a great painting really is. This inspired a whole new spectrum of painting she was willing to attempt. The painting that influenced her the most, as she mentioned it a few times during the lecture, was Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. She continued painting to show depth and tried to paint only what she saw, not what she thought she saw. There was no specific meaning for each painting; she was merely trying to find what she really wanted to paint and create space in each painting. Approaching 30, Sands decided to go to graduate school at Yale. Eventually, her painting started to become mundane. She left paintings unfinished. After graduate, she taught at the New York Academy of Art. There were tensions in teaching styles, so she left for Indiana. In Indiana, she realized that her students were free and more open to abstract, which she had envied. She decided to draw. This created a major change in her style. Her paintings looked like “scribbles” but look at it long enough and the real picture pops out. After a while, her paintings, and materials, shifted. Her paintings were greatly influenced by African marimba music. Each line was an addition of a beat to the rhythm. The paintings were also smaller. Scale was very important to Sands because it tells the appreciator how to look at the painting. Sands is currently working with acrylics and creating paintings consisting of lines and dots, which tell a story if looked at long enough.
Before ending and allowing students to view actual works by her, Sands left some wise advice. Paintings become meaningless without anyone actually looking at them. The meaning comes from the act of painting and the act of seeing it and understanding.