Roger Sandes is a self-taught artist who returned to painting, a childhood passion, after studying comparative literature in college and acting at theater school. Two years of living, work and travel in England and France as well as extensive travel and work in the major art centers of Italy, Portugal, Spain and Mexico have informed his style. For 40 years, he has produced figurative works on nature-based and art historical themes for private and corporate collections. His work has been exhibited from New York to California and Minnesota to Florida. He lives in Vermont with his wife, artist Mary Welsh.
The artist paints large, vividly colored multi-patterned works based on nature, myth and the history of art. His paintings, done on gessoed wooden panels in acrylic washes and glazes, look like silk and feel like eggshell. Another series, made of paper colored with latex and acrylic paint and then cut and glued on paper, reveals vivid silhouettes of creatures of land, sea, and air.
“The images that are incorporated into my paintings are symbols of life, fertility and repose -- icons that have been an integral part of art in all cultures since primitive times. I assemble these images in ways that high-light their natural beauty and abstract form and integrate or synthesize elements of modern art and folk art, nature and artifact. By balancing the simple and complex, I hope to create objects of contemplation that will attract the eye immediately and also reward subsequent examination with layers of meaning, with delightful color, with examples of human creativity and with allusions to living well. Each painting is a synthesis of the varied cultural influences that have shaped my visual consciousness. When these influences converge in a painting, the ordered complexity that results is intended to convey a simple message: reverence for life.â€
