B I O G R A P H Y Sandra Pratt is an American painter who anchors her artistic vision in landscape, cityscape, and coastal painting. Her impressionist style is infused with boldness, spontaneity, and emotion, her every knife stroke strives to capture reality through the lens of her imagination and personal feelings. It is her unique experiences that enable her to bring seemingly ordinary scenes to life on canvas by employing a plethora of unconventional painting techniques. She states; "My approach to making art is guided by intuition and intense observation of the subject. The act of painting releases a stream of consciousness and creative energy that reveals my view of reality. The tension between visual perception and engaging with the paint itself guides my process. It straddles the line between realism and abstraction. Painting leaves a record of my experience. It is my most poignant and genuine means of expression. My paintings are not intended to convey a specific message, but rather to evoke an emotion from the viewer." The sparse compositions present a countryside that is safely isolated from industry and technology. Uninhabited broad village streets draw you into her work, and the aged quality of the buildings suggests rugged personalities replete with awkward inadequacies and fallacies. In the studio, Sandra happily blends the memory of these remote landscapes with her enjoyment of pure paint and an intuitive sense of design. The personal and emotional nature of Sandra's work is influenced by her self-taught approach to working with composition, oil paint, and the palette knife. Years dedicated to a singular mode of working have resulted in dexterous paint handling and a strengthening of her themes of home, community, and landscape. Her harmonious compositions are rooted in an ever- present horizon line and often entice the viewer through a strong use of linear perspective; drawing the eye into and through an anonymous village street or to the door of a lone house on the prairie. Her panels and canvases are decisively developed in bold, confident shapes of thick de-saturated earth tone colors. With nature and old architecture as her inspiration, her palette has evolved into rich reddish blacks, pale blues, creamy yellows, blue grays, and brownish tans. The places Sandra paints into being possess age and history as well as a particular charm from being well used and needed. Sandra, who typically works in spurts, uses subjects and palettes that often recur in paintings, allowing her to rework and make subtle adjustments to previous paintings. She might repeat the same landscape as if haunted or obsessed by a scene, changing just small moments within each version. The immediacy of her palette knife marks and the medium to small scale of her work, provides an intimate experience of these beloved, imagined places. Sandra's work has been exhibited at the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont, with the Allied Artists of America in NY, and at the A.R. Mitchell Museum and the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art in Colorado. Sandra Pratt is from Chicago, IL, and she currently lives in Boulder, Colorado. A W A R D S 2016 Best of Show Bold Brush Painting Competition 2015 Bold Brush Award 2012 1st Place Northern Colorado Artist Association Exhibition, Fort Collins, CO Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Exhibitions, Golden CO - Sarah Rutherford Award 2001 Stamford Art Association Award - Stanley & Vivian Reed Marine Art Show, Stamford CT 2001 National Works on Paper Show, Houston, TX E X H I B I T I O N S 2023 "Setting New Standards" PCA Gallery, Bend OR 2022 "Solo Show" Abend Gallery, Denver, CO 2021 "Beyond the Surface" Mockingbird Gallery, Bend OR 2021 4 Person Show", Rice Polak Gallery 2018 "Solo Show" Smith Klein Gallery, Boulder, CO 2017 "Abundance" Solo Show Selby Fleetwood Gallery, NM 2017 Two Person Show Mockingbird Gallery, Bend OR 2015 Vilona Gallery, Boulder CO 2015 "Snow" Selby Fleetwood Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2014 Group Show Plein Air Austin, Dougherty Center, Austin TX 2014 Solo Show Selby Fleetwood Gallery, Santa Fe, NM 2013 "Post Linear" Gallery Shoal Creek, Austin, Texas 2019 Group Show-Lincoln Center, Fort Collins, CO 2008 "New Expressionism" Merrill Johnson Gallery 2007 "The American River" Brattleboro Museum, Brattleboro, VT 2005 Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, Fort Collins, CO 2005 Allied Artists of America Show, New York, NY