Newberg’s work on display at SWAAC

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HOPE – Sandra Newberg has a goal with her paintings: “To make people smile and brighten their day and their homes.”

A native of Little Rock, the artist describes herself as a “late-bloomer’; she decided to immerse herself in art after retiring from the education field. Before then, she had never had an art class “and just thought learning to paint would be fun.”

“Fun” is how many people describe her work, which centers around single or groups of women with no facial features and colorful, no-neck fat birds in bright colors.

Newberg is a featured artist of the Southwest Arkansas Arts Council’s (SWAAC) gallery show in the Art Station at 200 East Division Street in Hope. The collection of her “fun” art will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Additionally, Newberg will attend a special SWAAC members-only reception from 6-8:30 p.m., Monday, October 16. Memberships are available, beginning at $25 and can be purchased at the Art Station.

Newberg said she has always “loved to create and make things; after retirement, she first took a watercolor class and then tried her hand(s) at pottery. “My art has changed over the years,” she said.

After working with watercolors, she felt a need to “paint larger,” and stated painting acrylics on pottery and then “eased into using acrylics on pottery and then attaching pottery to painting just to see what would happen.

“After several years, I started to focus on painting. And, I love to experiment on different surfaces. One day I couldn’t find paper and needed to paint so I started drawing women on the ceiling of my studio; they are now my muses.”

She describes her basic style as eclectic abstract. “My birds are not like those depicted by John James Audubon in Birds of America.’ Rather they are big, fat birds that, hopefully, make you smile and brighten your day and home.”

It doesn’t take much to make Newberg happy: “Just putting paint on paper makes me happy. I don’t like a clean, white canvas so messing it up with lots of paint is fun to me. Once I do that I decide what I am going to put on the canvas.”

She invited “everyone who likes to smile and have fun to visit the gallery show. I bet there will be something there that will make each visitor smile.”

Newberg has donated an art piece to the SWAAC for a raffle that will be held during the month-long exhibit. Tickets are available at the Art Station or from council board members for $5 each or five for $20.

 

 

 

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