Sandy is a visual artist, a painter who works in oils.
Her paintings are her interpretation of the ever relevant paradoxes of faith, war and nature. Much of what she does is predicated upon a personal fundamental acceptance of the "divine absurdities" of existence, and the dualities in our existence of love/hate, violence/ peace, silent/sound, night/day. She focuses on our culture's abuse of the environment, our love affair with greed, our throw away consumerism and our sanitizing of violence. These abuses are glossed over with the use of religious platitudes. She has been called political, but doesn't know how to separate politics from art. Both ask something of us, something that challenges us to a responsibility.
She was born in Yakima, WA in 1940 and raised on a farm near Camp Adair in the Willamette Valley, OR. After completing her B. A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, she returned to Oregon and Newport in l985. The subjects from her paintings are influenced by my growing up experiences on a farm where she was raised by a family consisting of avid environmentalists and gun lovers. Her father's gun cabinet was part of her parents' bedroom furniture.
In April 2007 at the Blackfish Gallery in Portland, OR, then Pastor (now Bishop) Dave Brauer-Rieke and she had an exhibition of paintings and poetry titled, "Creation Cabal." The exhibition was the result of an artistic collaboration between poet/ Bishop Brauer-Rieke and her about how religion and art today relate to the directives contained in Genesis 1 and 2. The paintings and poetry explored current environmental concerns and humanity's impact on the earth. Over time they discovered that much of what they seek to say with oils Bishop Brauer-Rieke tries to paint with his words/poetry. Their collaborative efforts also explored the erosion of common language between 21st century arts and religion.