Posts Tagged ‘abstract’

Mary Sanders is a Charleston-area painter who is best known for her portraits of people.  Her unique portraits include drips, smudges, and under-painting, giving them a sort of extemporaneous, abstract-art look – although they are at the same time detailed and full of personality.

Early Life
Sanders was born in Princeton, WV, in October of 1949.  She first witnessed the “power of art,” as she calls it, when she broke her mother’s 78 RPM recording of an opera and her mother cried.  While she received encouragement from her family to pursue her artistic talent, she decided to explore other talents because her sister was also interested in art and showed a lot

 of talent.  “It was my sister who was the artist,” explains Sanders.  “No two children could be the same thing.”

Her first formal training was much later, at Oregon State University in the early 1970’s.  She was an art major, with emphasis on pottery.  She enjoyed the tactile experience, but slowly moved toward drawing and painting later in life.  She is mostly self-taught.

Inspiration/ Admiration
Sanders is mostly inspired by art that she sees around her.  She currently works in her Charleston studio, which is in a basement equipped with “extremely bright lights.”  She is currently setting up a second studio, in Bath County, above a garage, with a beautiful view of two fields and a river. 

Sanders says her biggest challenge is finding time to work on her art.  As a “morning person,” she enjoys working in her studio first thing every day, but is usually driving to work at that time.   Instead, she tries to spend as much time as possible every weekend working in her studio when there are no distractions.  Her favorite piece of her own work is a self-portrait in watercolor.

Current/ Future Work
Sanders is currently between projects, and is very busy with her work as a Charleston lawyer.  She has exhibited her work at the Bath County Art Show for years.  She also juried into the 280 exhibit at the Huntington Museum in 2007, and the WV Artist Guild show in 2006.  She has participated in shows titled “The Little Known,” and “Artistic Stimulus” in Charleston, WV.

Paula Clendenin is a Charleston area painter who is best known for her innovative abstract works.  Her work can be seen in many local locations, including Taylor Books, the Avampato Museum (Clay Center), and the Art Store on Bridge Road.  She is best known for her series of paintings that incorporated a language of symbols, including mountains, throught the entire series of paintings, but is moving toward a new body of work that includes pieces incoroporating coal dust, rust, and other environmental elements into her paintings.

Early Life
Paula Clendenin was born in Charleston, West Virginia, and lived there until her parents divorced six months after her birth.  After their divorce, she moved to Cedar Grove with her mother.  As a child, she enjoyed coloring books, paint by number sets, and Walt Disney.   As she grew up and started seriously considering majoring in art, her parents began to grow more nervous about her choice, but encouraged her to do her best.  She graduated from West Virginia University and received her MFA in 1975.

Since then, Paula’s artistic training continued.  She has had seven jobs in art throughout the U.S., collections in seventeen different places including the Clay Center for the Arts in downtown Charleston, West Virginia, and more than fifteen exhibits, about half of them taking place in West Virginia.  Her most recent show was at Frances Naumann Gallery in New York last spring, and her last local show was at the Huntington Museum of Art a few years ago.  She is currently working on a project for a one-person show in May for The Art Store Show in Charleston, West Virginia.  If she is not at an art show, however, you can find her in her studio, painting in her attic, drawing in her dining room, printing in her spare bedroom, or building things in her basement. 

Current Work
When it comes to painting, the words that describe Paula’s works best are “bold,” “textural,” and “symbolic.”  She says that she gets her ideas for paintings from just about anywhere.  Although she enjoys using symbols, her more recent artwork has become less dependent on them.  She also says that people do not need to understand her in order to get her art work.  “I hope that the work speaks to them directly without my interrupting it for them,” she quotes.  Her artistic goal is to develop her art to the best of her ability using all of her creativity to its highest. 

Paula uses a variety of tools when working, but her most commonly used one is her iPod, because she likes listening to music while working. She also enjoys the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.