Sandra Templeton Potter: Bio

After earning a B.S. degree in Commercial Art from Central Missouri State University, where she won the senior painting award, Sandra went on to study painting and drawing at the Kansas City Art Institute, working mostly under Wilbur Neiwald. She then earned 6 hours of graduate credit in art history from the University of Minnesota in a course of study which included an art tour of Europe. Throughout her career as an illustrator she continued to study fine art drawing and painting under such notable teachers as Daniel Greene, Albert Handell, and Edward Jonas. Sandra began her career as a commercial illustrator and was voted into the New York Society of Illustrators. Clients included Philips Petroleum, Twins magazine, Hallmark Cards, Cricket Magazine, Highlights for Children, Nekoosa Papers, Sprint, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Ralston Purina, Golden Harvest, Terracon, AGCO Allis, Aldergate Press, World Records, Nazarine Publishing House, and Heston. Sandra now concentrates on fine art with an emphasis on figure and portrait painting and was recently chosen as one of only four portrait artists nationwide to qualify for the Cecilia Beaux Forum mentoring program, and was critiqued by Everett Raymond Kinstler. The Cecilia Beaux Forum is part of The Portrait Society of America of which Sandra is a member.

AWARDS AND ORGANIZATIONS

Member New York Society of Illustrators
Member Portrait Society of America
Member Cecilia Beaux Society
Multiple awards from Kansas City Art Directors
Multiple awards from Kansas City AD Club
NAMA (publications) second place 1995
NAMA (publications) first and second place 1996
NAMA (publication) first place 1997
New York Society of Illustrators 18th show and annual
New York Society of Illustrators 32nd show and annual
Sandra has shown in juried shows with both the Mid America Pastel Society and
The Southwest Pastel Society, and participated in group shows at the Bohemian, Incubator, and KCAI Crossroads Galleries in Kansas City, and the Federal Reserve Bank in Oklahoma City.
Sandra has been represented by the Phoenix Gallery and the Union Hill Gallery in Kansas City.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I paint from life. I paint every day. The subject does not matter. The point of painting is in the process, not the product. The point of painting is beyond words.

To choose to be a painter is somewhat like choosing to be in a religious order of isolation and constant prayer. It is to choose to trust that in aligning yourself with the universe it will provide not only for basic needs, but spiritual ones. It is to choose not to choose. It is, I think, what the Taoist call to be the uncarved block.

Painting is a journey, without expectation and without end. A painting is a visual record of experience in time and place unique and never to come again. Paintings are diary pages without words.
When people choose paintings to buy, I think they are choosing a similarity of experience and feeling. A visual example of who they are in sympathy with, in their space and time.

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