Sandra Maresca is one of Guerneville’s talented and hardworking artists. You may have seen her work at the Russian River Gallery on Main Street, or Art At The Source Open Studio Tour for the past 19 years.
Sandra’s art reflects her love of animals, how much we can learn from them and their relationship to people plus her desire to make people laugh. “We human beings take ourselves too seriously,” she says. Her paintings are often stories or peaceful landscapes done with oil on canvas in her studio, mostly from photographs, often from garage sale photo books. She also create whimsical notecards with watercolor and has sold over 15,000. “I do art because it’s soulful. It helps me realize that the world is more than this crazy, warmongering mess that we’re in.”
For as long as she remembers she was drawing and sketching what she saw, and she still paints and draws at her peaceful two story studio tucked away in the Guerneville woods. When she was in high school near San Diego, she designed a winning house in a drawing contest which was actually built. After graduating from Berkeley, she became a French teacher for fourteen years. France is still one of her favorite subjects to paint.
She started painting during her summer breaks in 1975 beginning with a painting of a sheep.
Her fascination with animals continues in her current paintings. After another degree in business, she spent 23 years working in the tech world, but never gave up her passion for drawing and sketching. She decided to take up painting full time after leaving her job and moving to Jenner and subsequently Guerneville.
.Interview by Carolyn Wayland, River Arts