By permission of the artist, The Cyber Art Show is pleased to feature the first of two 12-piece exhibitions of works by American landscape painter Sandi Gelman Wolf (born 1956 in Newark, New Jersey).

 

Sandra (Sandi) Gelman Wolf spent her childhood in Maplewood, NJ, a suburb of New York City. Throughout these years, Sandi enjoyed the New York cultural scene, including theatre, dance, music, art museums and galleries. She had particular passions for dance and piano performance and, by the end of her high school years, had become proficient in performance in both of these areas.

 

She left home in 1974 to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Even while handling the rigors of U. Penn’s

undergraduate program, culminating in a cum laude degree in

1978, Sandi pursued her love of the arts, performing in musical

theatre productions and continuing her piano studies. A summer backpacking trip through Europe, followed by a summer studying art history at Cambridge University in England, reaffirmed her passion for art, if only (at that time) as a viewer. After graduation, she moved to Chicago to study at the University of Chicago Law School, receiving a Juris Doctor degree in 1982.

 

Sandi made her home in New York City from 1982 until 1993, practicing corporate and securities law at two major law firms. During this time, she continued to enjoy New York’s diverse cultural scene. There, she was a frequent visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick and the Whitney, among others.

 

Sandi married in 1989 and, in 1993, she, her husband and their two-year-old son moved to Short Hills, NJ. Sandi became a full-time mother and an active community volunteer, and gave birth to a daughter in 1996. In 2008, missing her own active involvement in the arts, she enrolled in an oil painting class at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (VACNJ), Summit, NJ. Her intent was to have a little fun. Instead, she fell in love with painting and it became a major focus of her life. She had her first solo exhibition, "First Show", in 2010 in Summit, showcasing oil paintings drawn primarily from her travels.

 

In 2010, Sandi began studying with the esteemed artist Anne Kullaf. Shortly thereafter, she started working in pastels in addition to oils and quickly developed an affinity for the medium, drawn by its vibrant color palette and openness to her emerging flee-flowing artistic sense. She has been working in both ever since, and enjoys the symbiosis of working in both media. She has also studied pastels with Julie Friedman and attended workshops with Casey Klahn and Desmond O’Hagan.

 

Since her first "just-for-fun" art class, Sandi has now become a full-time working artist. Her work has been featured on the cover of The Showcase and The Collection magazines, and included in numerous juried shows, including the upcoming Studio Montclair’s 19th Annual Exhibition: View Points 2016. She is a member of the Pastel Society of America, the Pastel Society of New Jersey, Studio Montclair, and the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.

 

Sandi paints in a loose style, emphasizing form, color and line over realism and detail. Her subject matter covers landscape, still life and pure abstraction. She has an upcoming solo show, "From Within", featuring pastels created solely from her imagination and emotions.