Sandy Delehanty – Artist Spotlight

Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Sandy Delehanty and I am a painter. Watercolor is my favorite medium, but I have also painted in oils. I taught watercolor classes and workshops for 25 years in California, but I also worked for tour companies and taught in France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Greece and Bali. I retired from teaching to paint full time 5 years ago.

Why do you do what you do?
Painting is my passion. When a painting is going well, I get lost in the sheer joy of creation. When a painting becomes a struggle, I press on. I am an optimist. Somewhere in the mess there might be something I can salvage! If not, I have learned something from my mistakes. Learning is the key. Never will I stop trying to learn. When I stop learning, that is the day my work will become mechanical, predictable and boring. Painting, drawing, studying, traveling, exploring, experimenting, questioning, listening, observing, always the student…that is me.

What themes do you pursue?
Like many artists I tend to work in series. You can see this when you visit Auburn Old Town Gallery,because you will see giraffe, and an ostrich painting from my series “Art to Make You Smile” and you will see my travel sketches in ink and watercolor, and then there are my watercolor landscape paintings from my “California Treasures” series. I began my career as a flower painter. I do not know where I will go next…

Describe a real-life situation that inspired you.
Sitting on a bench sketching Notre Dame in Paris I said to my sketching companion Bobbi, “I wonder how many thousands of artists have painted this cathedral over the centuries?” We discussed ideas for creating a truly unique painting of the building when it occurred to me that if I could capture it at an odd angle and paint it with unusual colors maybe I would have something uniquely different. So, we walked around the building, and I held my iPhone camera above my head aiming it at the building but not looking at the screen so I would not be tempted to compose a picture. Snap, snap, snap: a hundred photos later we found a cafe table, ordered cappuccinos and looked at the photos. I found one image of the top of a tower taken at an angle and when I returned home, I painted it by pouring and blending liquid watercolor on the paper to create accidental colors. The painting was accepted into the most competitive watercolor exhibition in the world, the American Watercolor Society’s International Juried Competition. I think I succeeded in creating the unique painting I was after.

What jobs have you done other than being an artist?
My first job was as a clerk in a Mercantile store at age 12. I also flipped burgers, sold cable TV subscriptions door to door, worked at a hotel casino snack bar, was a Blackjack Dealer, a sketch artist in Europe, a “Road Warrior” (outside sales representative) in the construction industry, the publishing industry, and the picture framing industry and taught watercolor classes and workshops.

What are your hobbies?
Gardening and traveling