SANDRA SELESNICK
GALLERY
All the things that artist Sandra Selesnick, a South African native who studied in London, brings to her art can be seen in her paintings. A professional potter for nearly 20 years, she is a master of painting surfaces, at getting them to reveal their texture, and reflect light to display richness and detail.
Selesnick the potter segued into Selesnick the painter in a way she probably never expected would happen. “I just started painting the surface of my pots one day,” she recalls. Suddenly, it seemed more important to paint than it did to shape clay. Now, in her paintings, she uses oil on canvas (occasionally on board) because she likes the wetness of the oil, its fluidity and its plasticity. Perhaps the potter is still at work within the painter? Acrylic dries too quickly in her view, and doesn’t respond to the painter’s touch as much as oil.
The surfaces, textures and lines in Selesnick’s paintings create a dynamic contrast. The richness of her imagery is reinforced by colors drawn from a rich earthy palette. Selesnick says she applies color quickly, almost without thinking about it. The brushstrokes seem quick and sure, although she says at the time that she does not paint hastily. The compositions seem to take care and precision, with the placement of objects in relationship to each other being as important as the placement of colors near each other. The teachers she most admires, in fact, are those who didn’t so much criticize work as ask how she felt about the way colors and objects were juxtaposed. Sandra remakes the object in her still lifes and the scenes in her
cityscapes to conform to her vision of their realities and imbues them with a new vitality.
Sandra Selesnick was born and raised in South Africa. She studied at the Capetown University there and then at the Camden Art School in London, UK as well as the Washington Studio School in Washington DC.
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