The Gloria Cachion Gallery at the Southbury Public Library will showcase the art of Sandra Cointreau from Thursday, May 2, 2024 through Thursday, May 30, 2024.
The new series of paintings by Sandra Cointreau brings together her view of an evolving environment, and the beautiful animals that experience it. Dynamic change surrounds them as they deal gracefully and gently with the changes.
Sandra graduated as the only female in a class of 1,000 engineers during the year of the first Earth Day. Her student activities for that day led her to devote her engineering work to the environment. She spent the next 50 years on pollution control, remediation, water resources, and waste management.
Sandra’s work included travel to over 65 developing countries to develop the plans for new systems, as well as reconstruction of systems after conflicts or disasters. Her work also addresses climate change mitigation, and the management of wastes from livestock.
Traveling as a consultant an average of 30% each year for field work overseas, Sandra sketched or painted in her hotel on many nights and weekends. Painting was her way to step away from the harsh realities of the field work in the world’s worst slum areas and post-conflict areas. Watercolor was an easy travel companion, so it became her primary medium.
Consulting work enabled her to be home in Connecticut 70% of the time, able to breed a line of standard poodles, keep bees, and have horses and ride. Never without a camera, her photos of the beauty and serenity of Connecticut, its flowers and creatures, its trees and stones supported her painting overseas.
Like a spider’s web between separate tall grasses, this new collection weaves together her environmental experience and her connection to animals. Using bold abstract backgrounds, these paintings attempt to show beautiful sentient beings, strong and resilient, within a world of great diversity and change. These vivid works are done in acrylic on wrapped canvas.
Sandra is “not exactly” self-taught. Being a bit of a “self-proclaimed nerd”, she has privately worked through dozens of painting books and hundreds of DVDs by master painters. She took classes overseas and locally. She has shown her work in juried shows overseas and locally, including a number of state and regional watercolor society shows. In the past two years, she has had solo shows of her watercolors in 5 venues. She has participated in shows of several of the local art associations, including Kent, Newtown, New Milford, Woodbury, and Washington. Several galleries have included her work, including RiverWind, Studio Hill, Hens Nest and Warrens Landing. She is a member of the Connecticut Watercolor Society.
The exhibit will be open during regular library hours which are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9:30am to 5:30pm, Tuesday and Thursday 9:30am to 9:00pm, Saturdays 9:30am to 4:00pm and Sundays 12:00pm to 5:00pm. A sample of photos will be posted online in the virtual gallery.
Please visit us at www.southburylibrary.org to view a sample of photos virtually and for any updated hours and information. Or you may call us at 203-262-0626.
Sandra’s Bio: https://www.southburylibrary.org/using-the-library/spaces/art-gallery
The gallery: https://www.southburylibrary.org/gallery
