Meet Katey Sandy, Artist
Artist Statement
As an abstract mixed-media artist and painter, I create intuitively from the internalized inspiration of nature’s shapes, colors, and textures. I love to experiment by letting each composition unfold and evolve naturally as I add marks, creating a very intuitive process. This gradual and meandering method is often reflected in visibly layered, textured, and compositionally nuanced works.
My work is very diverse; I use a variety of approaches and materials, including collage and acrylic paints, and as I work I interact with the art-making process of each piece. My sense of design guides the creation. My finished works are not realistic renderings but my vibrant expressionistic interpretations of the world, most often of nature but at times also referencing the human experience.
I offer each piece to the viewer, hoping they will find beauty and enjoyment based on their own experiences and interpretations.
Artist Bio
Katey graduated from San Diego State with an Art Education degree and taught junior high school art for three years in San Diego, leaving to start a family. She went on to earn a Master's Degree in Early Childhood Education and worked in that field for 35 years.
Although she kept painting, family and work took precedence, but her desire to experiment and create in various mediums was kept alive as she worked with children and college students. Art was always a curriculum focus in her career in education. In particular, Katey learned a lot about art and the process of creating art from the eager, fresh approach of young children. After retiring in 2007 from the Education Department at Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon, she returned to painting. In 2012, she started teaching a mixed media and abstract painting class for the Mature Learning Program at Clark College in Vancouver, WA, where she continues to teach.
She has shown and won awards throughout the Pacific Northwest, including three different shows at The Second Story Gallery, in the Camas, Washington Library. She has been juried into and participated in 6 Clark Couty Open studio tours. Some of her more recent awards include first place in the Oregon Society of Artists 2018 Rose Show, an Honorable Mention in 2020, and 3rd place in the SWA fall 2021 show at the Cave Gallery in Vancouver, WA. She also won third place in the 2019 national juried Associated Arts of Ocean Shores, Washington. Additionally, she has exhibited at the First Unitarian Church in Portland, several years in a gallery in Sisters Oregon, and in Longview Washington. In 2012 she had a special show in Battle Ground, Washington called Poetic Impressions featuring 15 of her paintings of poems written by Arla Olsen. Some of which have been since been published in a book of poems by Arla.
Katey is on the Society of Washington Artists Executive Board and previously served as their Spring Show Chair for four years. She is also on the Executive Board of Mosaic Arts Alliance in Vancouver, WA, and is a member of the Southwest Washington Watercolor Society.