Meet Sandra Christensen: Color Pencil
Born and raised in Racine, Wisconsin located along the shores of Lake Michigan, it probably was not coincidence that she married a man who would sail the high seas pursuing a Naval career. Sandra was fascinated by drawing at a young age and entered all those "Draw the Horse" contests found in the magazines of that time. She also found out at a young age that drawing animals were not her forte' nor were portraits. She entered local art competitions prior to high school winning at the State level for her landscape and architectural renderings. However, after high school her colored pencils went dormant as she studied history at Valparaiso University before marrying her high school sweetheart and started following her husband from port to port.
It wasn't until thirty years later while Sandra was working as an Administrative Assistant to an electrician in the metropolitan corridor that she took her pencils out of the attic so to speak. The advent of landscape lighting - business owners and homeowners alike found it difficult to visualize and thus, Sandra started sketching buildings and residences highlighting the safety and aesthetic benefits of such lighting. In the early nineties Sandra's husband retired and they decided to remain in their home in Maryland and shortly thereafter came the realization that they had never taken time to explore their own backyard. Starting with St. Mary's City and all the wonderful history and abundant landmarks and that's all it took to rekindle Sandra's appetite for drawing. It wasn't long before she became a member of both the St. Mary's County Arts & Crafts Guild and the St. Mary's County Art Association. Sandra is a self-taught artist specializing in drawings of landmark structures of Southern Maryland including lighthouses of the Chesapeake Bay and many area places of worship.
"It seems like I spend most of my time running the roads of Southern Maryland as everything I do takes me forty to fifty miles south and back." Sandra and her husband of forty-seven years reside in Clinton, Maryland. She can be reached at CreationsSandra@aol.com.