Discovery:
The Art of Sandra McCourry
© 2005 Be Davison Herrera
As a young child, Eugene, Oregon artist Sandra McCourry repeatedly dreamed of swirling shapes she couldn't identify. Then, trudging over sand dunes at age 10, she suddenly recognized her dream images in the wind-swirled sand. Thus began a lifelong fascination with curves which appear throughout her handwriting, her doodling, and her art.
This early experience of internal imagery mirrored in physical reality presaged another key element in McCourry's abstract, multi-layered, mixed watermedia works which are gaining increased recognition in the USA and Australia - the theme of discovery emerging from Nature. “Many of my paintings are abstracted landscape scenes of nature that were not planned,” she says. “They just developed from many layers of paint, until I saw the subject start to emerge.”
McCourry's paintings express the deep connection she feels between "outer" Nature, her inner emotional reality, and her accumulated life experiences including world travel and personal loss. True to her conviction that artwork must come from the inside, she often discovers her subject matter through interacting with her materials: “I let the paints and the paper speak to me as I paint.” When an emerging image evokes memories of a particular location, as in The Waterfall, shown here, she says, "I develop the painting with intent to capture the feeling I had of that place."
Her son's death seven years ago sent McCourry to her easel seeking solace and understanding. What she learned aided her emotional healing as it deepened her art. She discovered her own image in her previously-completed abstract painting A Woman's Grief, while another abstract called Broken Whole portrays her healing and gaining strength through a lengthy period of recovery.
“Each painting is a journey of my past experiences, and it leads me to a way to process them and to heal emotionally,”says McCourry. At the same time, each new work offers a chance to make new choices and discover new possibilities. Through experimentation with multiple layers of color, pattern and form, she produces textured visions built from multi-media elements ranging from Caran d'ache water color crayons to glue and foils, to sand, to copper leaf.
Some works use resist techniques incorporating inks, wax papers, liquid acrylics, watercolors, burlap, lace curtains, and Caran d'ache with images from carved linoleum blocks and more. While interacting with these diverse elements, her ultimate goal is always harmony. “Nothing can stick out like a sore thumb,” she says, “It all has to be integrated, to feel as though it belongs.”
While her creative process sometimes moves very quickly, more often the additions and subtractions - such as applying water and/or alcohol with an atomizer to define, deepen or intensify the design - can add days or weeks for each stage of the evolving painting. Working in partnership with her media, McCourry patiently awaits the emergence of what she calls “the jewel” - the complete, finished work.
For years, as an elementary school teacher, McCourry's university art training helped her facilitate her student's learning and personal growth through art. Her current art workshops encourage learners to explore their inner worlds by experimenting with many materials and techniques, guided by more intuition than design.
McCourry's technical mastery, the vehicle through which her creative discoveries emerge, has been recognized in Creative Composition In Design by Pat Dews, an authority in the field of mixed water media artwork who uses McCourry's work to illustrate various concepts.
Occasionally, archetypal images appear in her work, subconscious souvenirs of her travels on many continents. Her broad palette of choices, always growing, sometimes provides remarkable surprises, even for the artist herself. One occurred when a favorite work turned out to contain an image of a racing bike - not a subject she'd consciously set out to paint. According to McCourry, “The bike just emerged and with a little extra artistic flair, the piece was done.”
McCourry's example for emerging artists is the value of stretching beyond the limits of previous art training and experience, guided by personal passion and sense of adventure. “Most of my art develops because I try something,” she states. “It is important to be true to what you like.”
McCourry's work can be viewed on her website www.sandramart.com
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