Restful Evening, Portofino, by Sandhya Sharma.
Having lived, trained, taught, and painted in Asia, Europe, and Africa, Sandhya Sharma considers herself “a global nomad.” And her art provides “a quiet, underlying narrative” of the people and cultures she connects with along the way through her plein-air painting. “Having now moved homes on three different continents,” she says, “I have this sense of amazement at how diverse every place is, and how much beauty there is to be captured.” Today, Sharma’s home and studio are in Bethesda, MD.
Sandhya Sharma painting on location in Maine.
The Inheritance by Sandhya Sharma.
She experienced her first taste of plein-air work through an online course while living in Tunisia in 2006, but Sharma began painting seriously in the open air on the coast of Maine in 2015. After that, there was no turning back. “If you love nature and the outdoors,” she says, “when you take photographs to keep the memory alive, the colors are not the same, and the depth is missing. When you record a scene in a plein-air painting, you focus on what captured your attention. It offers so much more than a photo ever can.”
By way of example, Sharma points to THE AUTUMN TRAIL, a quintessential seasonal scene she captured during the Paint It Ellicott City plein-air event in Howard County, MD. Walking along a rural trail, she says, “I was stopped in my tracks because everything that defines autumn was happening in that scene. A large tree had fallen, and leaves were drifting down in the air. It completely described what fall would mean in that region.” Using a style she describes as “impressionism, informed by traditional painting,” she combined passages of transparent paint application in the deep shadows and distant banks of foliage with completely opaque pops of richly textured color for the blazing hues of the leaves in the foreground. “These are the kinds of scenes that give me complete freedom to use all of my techniques,” she says. To learn more, visit https://www.sandhyasharmafineart.com.
Sandhya Sharma’s easel set up to paint The Autumn Trail in a Maryland state park.
The Autumn Trail by Sandhya Sharma.