Reinvention: Nature’s Influence

The Catalyst: Rediscovering Artistic Expression Through Nature

Sandra’s new body of work represents a profound reinvention of her artistic expression. After years of creating, she finds herself beginning again with fresh eyes, a revitalised outlook, and a heightened focus on what she believes to be the most important: the sublime and boundless beauty of the natural world. This new direction was catalysed during a period of isolation that we all experienced collectively, when the world seemed to pause and our lives were abruptly confined to the limits of our homes. For her, it was in that stillness that she found the seeds of a new creative journey. The view of nature from the windows of her Minneapolis home became her first source of inspiration.

In those early mornings, she would wake before dawn and simply absorb the sight from her bedroom window: the darkened woods, their skeletal forms silhouetted against a slowly awakening sky. Sandra watched as the sunrise ceremonially revealed itself, threading through the tangled landscape, breathing life into the day. In the evenings, as she washed dishes at her kitchen sink, the reverse would occur. Mundane tasks were interrupted by stunning sunsets that painted the sky with shifting hues, eventually giving way to dusk. The skeletal trees surrounding her home seemed to frame these fleeting moments of natural beauty, their stark forms capturing the light and colour of the Minnesotan sky for just a breath in time. These images became the impetus for her new work.

Expansion of Vision: From Minneapolis to the Sierra Nevada

What began as a small, restricted view from her window evolved with the end of lockdown. Sandra’s perspective broadened not only metaphorically but also geographically as she relocated to Nevada. Now, her work is equally influenced by the expansive and monumental landscapes of the American West, particularly the giant, majestic trees of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This shift from the intimate view of the woods outside her Minneapolis window to the vastness of the Sierra Nevada has deeply shaped the evolution of her art. The sheer scale of the western landscape, with its towering trees and wide-open skies, demands a new way of seeing and a new form of expression.

The Sierra Nevada's ancient trees have become particularly important in her current work. She is drawn to those that have weathered countless seasons, twisted and scarred by time, their forms rugged and irregular. There is something hauntingly beautiful about a tree that has endured for centuries and is finally felled by time. These skeletal, recumbent forms, once reaching skyward, now lie on the earth, slowly decaying and returning to the soil. They remind her of fossils, ancient relics from a time long past, massive yet fragile as they begin to break down. These trees, in their decay, symbolise the cycle of life, death, and rebirth—a central theme in her current exploration.

An Exploration of Nature, Memory, and the Unknown

Through these muses of trees and sky, her work asks questions that linger beyond the physical: What is here and known? What was once known and has now vanished? What is there that is still to be discovered? These are open-ended questions that fuel a continuous exploration, a never-ending process of unravelling and ravelling experience. Form, colour, and structure are observed in nature’s landscape, internalised, and then mingled with her own internal world. Memory, emotion, and imagination are woven into the mix.

In time, these impressions are externalised, returned to the world via ink on paper, in a form that is stripped down to the bare bones. This idiosyncratic expression is the result of gathering a wealth of jumbled information—nature's forms, personal memories, fleeting emotions—and distilling them into something simple yet expansive. The interplay between nature’s forces and the elusive workings of human memory is at the core of her work. She is fascinated by entities that have been lost to the physical world but continue to haunt in a ghost-like fashion, blurring the lines between the real and unreal, the perceived and imagined.

Ultimately, her work grapples with the inevitability of death and destruction as part of the world’s natural order. Yet, despite the harshness of this knowledge, there is a lightness in her work, a focus on renewal, regeneration, and reinvention. Just as nature cycles through death and rebirth, so too does her creative process. She finds solace in this understanding and seeks to reflect that sense of regeneration in her art.

Process, Materials, and Creative Intent

Her new works are predominantly created using ink on paper, with each piece forming part of a larger series. This serial approach allows for a process of distillation and refinement, as each individual piece leads to the next, like cells reproducing and growing in complexity. Eventually, this progression leads to a further simplification, resulting in sculptures made from Mitsumata branches bound together by yarn.

The materials used are deliberately chosen for their symbolic value. Pristine white paper represents possibility—a blank canvas waiting to be filled with expression. The defined borders of the paper serve to contain a singular expression, which, like the natural world, grows and multiplies. The inks applied to the paper are subject to the whims of chance, relinquishing control at times to accidents and happenstance. This mirrors the human condition: despite our desire for control, we are often subject to forces beyond our power. In letting go of full control, she finds a sense of freedom, a freedom that allows the work to become more honest and expansive.

The process begins with observation, often in the form of hiking through the Sierra Mountains. These weekends spent immersed in nature provide the raw material for the art: the colours of the landscape, the sculptural forms of the trees, the light and shadow that play across the land. The memories of these places, combined with her personal interpretations, return with her to the studio and become the foundation of her creative process.

For Sandra, abstraction is simply a matter of moving in closer, of drilling down to the essence of what is before her. It is not about making the work less; on the contrary, it is about making it more—more expansive, more elusive, more open, more honest, more free. In refining her perspective and distilling the elements of her subject, she creates work that speaks to the universal, while remaining deeply personal.

This new phase of her work represents a return to the basics: nature, memory, and the cycle of life. Yet within this simplicity lies an endless expanse of possibilities, a freedom to explore, reinvent, and ultimately express the beauty and complexity of the world around her. In embracing this process, she has found a new sense of artistic freedom, one that allows her to continue asking questions, searching for answers, and finding beauty in the unknown.

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