Sandra Cavanagh
Sandra Cavanagh’s career began in 1997, after completing a Foundation in Fine Arts and a BA degree from the Kent Institute of Art and Design, University of Kent, UK. In the time since she has maintained a consistent practice and developed a large portfolio of work to include paintings, drawings and prints. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Cavanagh’s first two decades were pitched on the tensions between a loving family life and constant political upheavals, unrestrained military governments and the ominous danger of politically sanctioned brutality and censorship. She read Social Sciences at the University of Belgrano, Buenos Aires before emigrating to California and later to the UK where she completed studies in Fine Art. She returned to full residency in the United States in 2010 and has worked and resided in New York City ever since.
Could you tell us more about your background and how you began creating art?
During the first weeks of my Foundation in Fine Art we were introduced to The Cup Theory. Do something with a cup, they said. It was the first understanding I had of creative thinking and problem solving. We were given a short time limit for the project, I came up with a minute long piece of choreography that had six of us form into, well, a cup. Though soon I knew I wanted to be a painter even when loving every minute in every discipline and area of art we were taken through. To date I remain open to all flat media.
What does your art aim to say to its viewers?
I’d hope my work finds resonance in others. It may be a drawing of some event that’s made me hopping mad, or some endearing memory, or a shocker. It’s that fabulous Oscar Wilde quotation, All art is at once surface and symbol. Surface is feeling, symbol is culture, both are drivers of my process. A win is when someone responds to a piece.
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your daily routine when working?
I work daily, all hours, often many hours, unless I’m travelling, and even then I’m never without a sketchbook, and so truly never bored. A piece of work may start with a drawing, a story or news event, something that runs away with my feelings and stirs my curiosity to transpose it into an artwork.
What is the essential element in your art?
You ask a truly difficult question, I suppose in most of my work the core is the element of a story, but I paint portraits too, and I’ve series of watercolors that are primarily about colour, and digital work that’s all about color and abstraction, and I paint my studio table with all of its mess which isn’t a mess, in reverence for my materials. However, if I had to say one, it would be narrative.
In your opinion, what role does the artist have in society?
Another hard question. Hoping not to sound too clichéd, I think primarily the artist is a mirror to their time and community. If political, they’re about a societal viewpoint, if abstract they’re about an artistic viewpoint, if biographical they’re about a psychological viewpoint.
