ABOUT
Sandi Donnelly has been a maker all her life. She grew up in the Midwest in a household that valued sustainability long before it was fashionable. Her mother was a seamstress and made all the clothing for her three daughters. And for a time, her father took drawing and painting classes at the local art museum and exposed his 3 daughters to the process of drawing and painting.
After moving to Maine, Sandi went back to college and received her BA in ceramic art from the University of Southern Maine in 1994. That same year she founded Mud Lark Studio and began a 20+year career as a ceramic artist. Her hand built functional work was sold in several galleries in Maine and at regional craft fairs. She taught pottery classes to children in her studio and at the local Waldorf school.
In 2016 after taking a workshop at R&F Encaustic Paint in Kingston NY, Sandi fell in love with the process of encaustic painting. Wax offers warmth, luminosity and immediacy to the art making process. She enhances her regular studio practice by taking many workshops including the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA; Maine Coast Encaustic Workshop & Retreat and a weeklong Encaustic Painting Residency in Kennebunkport ME.
In addition to encaustic painting, in 2020 Sandi began a yearlong online course in cold wax painting and in 2022 traveled to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for a 5- day cold wax painting workshop with Jerry McLaughlin.
Sandi Donnelly lives in Freeport, Maine with her husband John.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Impermanence is the natural order of things. All things are in flux; tides ebb and flow, the sun rises and sets, seasons come and go, and time passes. And as I age, acceptance of the fragility of life arises with diminishment and brings forth a reordering of priorities. This concept of impermanence brings an openness and freedom to my understanding of the nature of life.
Working in an intuitive way, I engage with both the flow of the wax and the expressive qualities of color, organic shapes and mark making. The transient nature of the medium requires being present in the moment to the changes. The themes and marks that repeat come from the natural world such as patterns of bark on trees, seaweed in the sand and the curve of a quiet island cove. An important element in my work is color, which is used to enhance the narration of the story. Color & mark making are the words and the flow of the wax is the implement used to paint my story.