Andrew Sandberg's Fine Art

This wonderful piece by American painter, Edgar Payne, uses the technique of the "double image" to demonstrate man's relationship to nature. Two Indians ride on horseback through a desert canyon. The giant rock walls take on the form of architectural motifs, suggesting ancient temples or monumental sculptures. Payne uses this double image to impress the human imagination onto the rugged stone, as though to say that the cliff sides hold within them the potential for these shapes, which will only be released by the human mind. This theme is emphasized by the careful use of lighting, wherin the sunlight and cast shadows describe the path of the riders such that as they wander through it, they "illuminate" nature's potential. "Indians on Horseback, Canyon de Chelley, Monument Valley, Arizona" 25 x 30 inches, oil on canvas

While making this painting I was haunted by the line from Shakespeare: Saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch/ And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss. This line provided the title for the painting and served as a kind of mantra, summing up the design strand of the choreography of hands. The pilgrim's hands were one of the most carefully designed aspects of the work, and each took as long to create as the entire figure. Awestruck by the vision of the sculpture, the boy reaches out to the handrail for support. The trees flanking the staircase also reach out, but towards the monument, as though lifting laurels to an emperor, palms outstretched. The sculpture itself is centrally defined by the the gesture of its hands, the depicted hero reaching up toward a vision of his own.

I produced a video essay on John Keats' poem When I have fears that I may cease to be . I discuss the poem's theme, Keats' poetic means and the characteristics that make this a Romantic poem.

"Design-theme" is a concept originated by Tore Boeckmann, and which he derived from the concept "plot-theme," an aspect of literature first identified by Ayn Rand, and which she defined as: The link between the theme and the events of a novel. . . It is the first step of the translation of an abstract theme into a story, without which the construction of a plot would be impossible. A “plot-theme” is the central conflict or “situation” of a story—a conflict in terms of action, corresponding to the theme and complex enough to create a purposeful progression of events. 1 Similarly, a design-theme is the link between the abstract meaning of a painting and the arrangement of the composition. In his essay, "Caspar David Friedrich and Visual Romanticism," Mr. Boeckmann defines it as: " a unity of representational content and design means that isolates thematic meaning and that can be structurally expanded. " 2  In other words, it is the central...

Looking at Caspar David Friedrich's paintings I am awed by his ability to embody abstract thought in a visual expression. In  The Stages of Life  Friedrich contemplates how human beings can mentally project the course of our lives in the form of the concepts of "future" and "distance." In order to embody these concepts visually, he integrates them with the physical attributes of distance: the diminution of size and fading away of detail. In contrast to the detailed description and dark tonality of the foreground, Friedrich's ships sink away into a dreamy atmosphere of orange and blue. To integrate his projection of distance with its thematic meaning, Friedrich devised the method of echoing the arc created by the overall grouping of the ship's masts with the arced shape of the group of figures in the foreground. By presenting these characters at different ages Friedrich is telling the viewer outright that his projection of ships into the distance is ...

This is a composition I am working on. Most of this was done digitally, though this is a plan for an oil painting. As is clear from the image, I am working on an irregularly shaped canvas. I am experimenting with several things stylistically, and this is quite an unusual composition for me. I have never presented the natural world as being so forceful and violent, but the the painting is intended as a depiction of courage and so I want the environment to be as formidable as the woman. All of my paintings are centered around the "heroic human figure," but I don't think I have ever come this far before in depicting the strength of a character.

I would like to write about a painting that I have been contemplating, Caspar David Friedrich's On a Sailing Ship . A man and woman sit aboard a boat in a dark ocean headed toward land. The porcelain colored city in the distance is bathed in a soft light. It is close enough to be real to them, but distant enough for the atmosphere to make it dreamy and insubstantial.           Look at how the man's jacket ripples as though he were a continuation of the sea. To his darkness (tonally and metaphorically), the woman is the light. He is one with the dark forbidding sea; she, her dress the color of clay, represents land and home and safety on a solid earth.   She is perched up hopefully. The man, with slumped but straightening shoulders, looks up at land with similar longing, but as though as at a hope that is less real to him. This dynamic between the characters tells us that she is the greater moral strength between the two. The fact that she is in the...

Oil on paper, 5" x 7." This painting is based on some watercolor sketches I made of trumpet trees in Sarasota, Florida.

I decided to try my hand at designing a coloring page. Adult coloring books have become a sensation, and my curiosity is piqued. I designed this print by hand, and colored it digitally. Coloring book enthusiasts click here if you would like to purchase a digital download of this design. 

I made these in a figure drawing class in 2012. Graphite on paper. The assignment I gave myself was to express as much as possible in the most elemental terms, using only the bare line and minimal shading. This type of exercise is a valuable lesson in economy of means; it helps me orient myself away from naturalistic clutter and towards an essentialized view.

This is a landscape painted with oil on paper. It was painted from a photograph and the subject is a pond in Central Park. The visual theme is "distance" and all of my choices were made in order to communicate and stress the illusion of space.  The painting was made in four layers, with a few days between each one to allow the paint to dry. I am going to describe the process of each layer. STEP 1 The first step is to block in the large shapes. This is a means of mapping out the composition, choosing which objects will be included and which omitted. The exact tones used at this stage are not absolutely critical but are an approximation of the target colors. Since they will serve as a substrate for subsequent layers, I mixed them lighter and duller than my target colors. That way they won't dominate subsequent layers by showing through and altering the color of those layers—at least no more than I want them to. STEP 2 The next layer of paint is ...

I recently rephotographed this painting after having varnished it. The colors in this image are much closer to the real effect of the painting than I had achieved in earlier photographs. This is my favorite of all the paintings I have made. It is the most effective combination of the elements that are most personally important to me stylistically: brilliant colors, an integrated tonal key that allows for glittering highlights, extreme selectivity, and self-assertively solid, 3-dimensional objects. Apart from stylistic approach, it is also my favorite as a subject  for two reasons: It presents a strong female character, which I love in all art, from Antigone to Dominique Francon, and it uses an iconography that goes way back in world art. The subject of the "bather" goes as far back as civilization itself, and I love works of art that take known forms like this one and do something new to them to give them a new expressive purpose.