sbarksdale

Sandy Barksdale became interested in Oriental watercolor during the mid-1970’s, first as a collector and then as a student. She enjoyed the rigid discipline of Sumi-e and began introducing her own interpretation to her watercolor abstractions of nature.

Sandy put her paint brushes aside to return to teaching. Twenty years later in the fall of 2004, she picked up her brushes and palette to fulfill a desire to develop her talent at a higher level and create the beauty around her on paper.

Sandy’s works include watercolor, acrylic, and pen-and-ink. Her creative interpretations of environmentally-oriented subjects, such as nature scenes, flowers, and old barns, reflect a love of the outdoors she shares with her husband, Bill. Sandy and Bill live on a bluff overlooking the White River near Cotter in north central Arkansas.
Sandy graduated from Fort Smith High School, the University of Arkansas with as B.S. in Education, and did graduate work at the University of Memphis.

Sandy’s work has been exhibited in Little Rock, Hot Springs, Mountain Home, Cotter, Harrison, Yellville, Conway, and Van Buren, Arkansas, as well as Springfield and Hollister, Missouri, and Memphis, Tennessee.

She has commissioned paintings hanging in private collections in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Austin, Texas; St, Louis, Missouri; and Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico.

Sandy is a member of the Mid-Southern Watercolorists, Palette Art League, Harrison Art league, Bull Shoals Art Club, Mountain View Art Guild, and White River Artists.

In 2009, Sandy organized the Cotter Trout Festival Artists who sponsored the First Annual Cotter Trout Festival Plein Air Art Event. In 2010 after two successful years at the trout festival, the artists became the White River Artists, an organization devoted to expanding the awareness of en plein air painting to the Cotter area and bringing artists from Arkansas and neighboring states to the Cotter area to paint the beauty of the Ozarks.

In 2010, Sandy was appointed Regional Advisor for Mid-Southern Watercolorist. In 2009, she was chairman of the Area Art Club Art Show and Sale in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and was on the Mid-Southern Watercolorists Fall Exhibit committee.