Sandra Offutt - Painter

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SANDRA OFFUTT

I’m always asking questions about the things I paint. What is it about this door or hinge or cup or shoe or tree that’s telling me what it is?  How simple can I make the painting and still portray what it is I’m seeing?  How few values can I use?  How few colors can I use?  What is there in this object or scene that surprises me?  How can I let the viewer see it, too?  How can I paint all this intuitively, without thinking about all these questions?

Painting in this way draws on all I’ve learned:  growing up in many parts of the country and Japan and Panama; doing graduate study in philosophy, religion, and psychology; working and living in Greece, Germany, and Washington, D.C.; being a wife, a friend, a mother; daughter of aging parents; studying painting with many fine watercolorists and with oil painters George Earl Fox, Robert A. Johnson and Diane Ainsworth.

Geography has a role in my paintings, too.  I live in Port Townsend, Washington, where it’s a blue sky heaven in the summer and many shades of green and grey in other seasons.  My spiritual home is an island in the Aegean Sea of Greece, where I spend long weeks when I can, seeing bright, bright light and deep rich shadows -- thinking about them when I’m not there; trying to bring some of that sharp value change to winter still life; teaching students to think “value first.”   

Awards:  League of Reston Artists and Vienna Arts Society in Virginia; municipal competitions in Berlin, Germany; numerous juried exhibitions.

Phone:  360-379-9270