Art in the Community Presents Sande Waters: BOXED

Artist Feature: Sande Waters grew up in North Vancouver. She then lived and explored the BC coast on a sailboat for many years, eventually settling on Cortes Island for a decade. For many years now she has resided adjacent to the ocean by Cates Park. Consequently, the ocean has stimulated her senses and profoundly influenced her as an artist, inspiring her to paint intuitively as a method of expression.

The act of creating art is often described as a dialogue between the artist and the artwork. Paintings often speak to the artist about what is needed next in the conversation, as the pigments themselves have the potential to become an influential voice in the direction of the entire composition. Her colourful and fluid abstract paintings represent a fascination with how chaos can emerge in one’s life, no matter how carefully we plan.

Working with acrylic paint and ink on canvas or paper, Waters creates organic forms, by allowing the paint and ink to “do its own thing” layer upon layer. Her intuitive, bold, and energetic paintings reflect a synergistic process of letting go, spontaneous gestural abstractions that are transformed into images of significance by the artist.

Waters is compelled by the process of bringing the uninhibited, undefined, and indescribable, into physical form. By constructing boxes made from her paintings on paper, she juxtaposes the abstract with the tangible. By acknowledging the “Box”, Waters invokes numerous contemporary narratives. She perceives the boxes as a metaphor for diversity as they are various sizes, and each one has a unique painting on the surface. A “Box” is also an object of desire, a vessel of containment and mysticism, which establishes its power. The “Box’ signifies a contemporary form, which speaks to our global economy and prosperity. All these qualities define the concept of my boxes.

Waters received her BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver and MFA from San Francisco Art Institute, California. She currently volunteers as the Assistant Art Curator at Lions Gate Hospital for the Healing Power of Art program. She was the Vice President on the Board of Directors at Seymour Art Gallery, North Vancouver, BC and on the Board of Directors for the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver as Chair of the Artist Prize. Her work has been shown and collected in Canada, USA and Europe. She lives and works in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, BC as a guest on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, Stó꞉lō, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

sandewaters.com |  @sandewaters 

Sande Waters_ Boxes #1_Acrylic on Paper_2019_ 16″ x 17″x 20″