Chapin Library Gallery - November 2018
CCAL is happy to share that Sandra Oliver has a multi-piece display of her beautiful artwork in the Chapin Library Artist Gallery. The gallery is located in the Chapin Branch of the Lexington County Library and hosts the artwork of one of Crooked Creek Art League's fine artists each month.
Artist Bio
A native of North Carolina and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC-G), Sandra Oliver has called South Carolina home since moving here in 1976. She retired from the South Carolina public schools after teaching both business and mathematics.
Sandra first developed an interest in art after moving to Newberry, SC, in 1993 when she studied pastel and oil painting for a brief period. Devoting her time to her family and teaching, Sandra did not resume her art studies until mid-2011.
A member of Crooked Creek Art League, Sandra’s primary medium is watercolor, although she occasionally has worked in acrylics, oils, pastels, and mixed media.
Currently, Sandra is taking pottery classes at Frog Level Art Center.
She has been juried into the South Carolina State Fair Fine Arts Exhibit, Amateur Division, every year since 2011. She has also exhibited paintings in Crooked Creek Juried Art Exhibition, Union County Arts Council Juried Art Show, North Charleston Juried Art Show, Old Santee Canal Juried Art Show (Moncks Corner), and Art Flow (Allendale). Both The Gallery and Handcrafted Artists Emporium in Newberry have several of Sandra’s paintings.
Sandra’s collage and watercolor work, “Orchid,” won the Post Card Award in the Crooked Creek Juried Art Exhibition in 2017. She was co-chair of the Juried Art Exhibition for two years and is currently the Workshop Coordinator.
Artist Statement
A Few of My Favorite Things
I have found that I am attracted to specific subjects for my paintings - children doing ordinary activities, flowers, and family memories. I do paint flowers quite frequently, but they are mainly flowers grown by me or my relatives who email me photographs with the note, “you need to paint this.” One of the speakers at Crooked Creek said that we should paint what was familiar and paint what we loved. This collection contains A Few of My Favorite Things. All the paintings in the collection are in watercolor. Each invokes a specific memory
Snowy Day – the first painting I framed after I started taking watercolor lessons from Anna Kay Singley in 2010. I used as my Christmas card for my relatives and art buddies that year
Antique Desk and 1943 – paintings of my sister’s 100-year-old desk and a photograph of my mother
Come Play with Me – a child on the beach from a photograph I took on the last day of my vacation
Last Cast on Indian Lake – My husband loved fishing (or talking about fishing). The entire painting was done in Indian Red watercolor as a value study. The figure in the boat actually looks like my husband, even though he never fished alone; and he always thought that he would catch the “big” one on the next cast.
Oh, Buoy!Lobster Time – One of the last trips my husband and I took was in to visit Maine where, as a boy, he had spent summers with an aunt. We ate lobster every day for a week in a different town every day. These buoys were lined up on a dock waiting for their next trip out. I liked the colors and angles of the buoys and the old anchor they surrounded. This is one of two paintings of buoys that I did after the trip.
You can contact Sandra by clicking HERE.
