Studio B Fine Art Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Out of the Woods,” an exhibit featuring artwork created by two of the gallery’s favorite artists: Sandra and Bob Wood.
The exhibit will be on display until Oct. 16. It is free and open to the public.
This well-known husband and wife team claim that the only thing they have in common is that they have nothing in common.
“I’m a morning person, hate to travel, graze for food all day, and actively avoid art instruction.” explained Bob. “Even our horoscope signs are direct opposites; I’m a Pisces; she’s Virgo. We’re yin and yang, I guess.”
Bob, an English teacher and writer with no art training, started painting a year or two before he retired and uses whatever paint is handy-acrylic, oil, or even house paint. He often incorporates scraps of fabric into the composition.
Bob says “for me, the art is in the composition” and he, “just works on it until it looks right.”
Ceramics, too, are one of Bob’s many interests, and the show presents organic forms of hand-dug Swamp Creek clay treated with homemade glazes and fired in a propane kiln he built.
Sandra is a self-described “night owl,” world traveller, culinary artist, and life-long learner. As a right-brained art teacher, she has painted most of her life, and has studied with many nationally renowned watercolorists. All her paintings are based on real things interpreted through her vision.
Sandra leans toward linear drawings (an opposite to Bob who is a shape maker) and explains, “I avoid doing paintings that are ‘made up’ since I spent 40 years doing that during my teaching career.”
Sandra uses watercolors and sometimes pastels but avoids oil paints to which she is allergic. “I end up covered in it when I paint,” she offered.
“My awareness of the academic criteria for creations means that I’m a terrible self-critic; there are only a handful of my paintings that I consider technically perfect.
The couple first held a joint exhibit of their work at Studio B in 2014. Since then, Bob has participated in various group and solo art shows within the area. He has experimented in his farm and garden themes adding textural elements to his paintings. He has maintained his bright colors, simplified forms, and unsophisticated brushwork, offering a fresh take on parochial themes-country living, farming and gardening.
In her work, Sandra employs her studies with well-established Reading area artists, her travels to Europe to paint plein-air, and, more recently, her studies with nationally known watercolorists-Robert Burridge, Tom Lynch, Steve and Janet Rogers, Ken Hosmer, Joe Fettinger, Tony Couch, Donna Zigotta, and Lian Zhen.
“My favorite advice from Tony Couch is, ‘It’s watercolor! It will go badly! Don’t try to paint something to hang in the Louvre. I called this morning, and they said they had enough.'”
“He’s right: using watercolor is a challenge in that you get one chance in laying down the color. Much depends on the wetness of the paper that can be affected by things like humidity and the strength of color on your brush. It is best to naturally mix the color on the paper rather than on the pallet,” Sandra explained.
“Given his advice, I am striving to paint more loose and juicy, not relying on local color. I’m currently seeking what will be my ‘signature style.'”
