Hello, I'm Sandra.

I grew up drawing the family dog on the backs of school worksheets, and colored pencil was the first medium I really loved. It's patient and unforgiving at the same time: you can't hide a mistake, you can only layer your way through it. That habit of slow, careful layering is still at the root of everything I make.

For years art was something I did in the evenings and on weekends. It turned into a practice when friends began asking me to draw their pets. A small bear study became a commission, the commission became a referral, and before long I was spending more time at the drawing table than anywhere else.

Moving into oil changed how I see. Paintings like “The Elder”, made from a single photograph of a stranger on the street, taught me to look past likeness and pay attention to warmth, weathering and the small details people carry with them. “Best Friends”, a young woman and her Australian Shepherd with his paw on her shoulder, is the kind of piece I love most: not an owner and a pet, but two companions.

Today I work from a studio in the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn, splitting my weeks between commissions for families and my own paintings. Most of my clients find me through someone whose portrait already hangs on a wall.

Every commission starts with a conversation. I ask about the person or animal: how they sit, what they do when no one is watching, what you'd miss if the photo didn't show it. When Biscuit's family told me he waited by the door every afternoon with complete seriousness, that became the whole painting.

In oil I work in thin, warm layers over several weeks and save the thicker paint for where the light lands. In pastel and colored pencil I build up dozens of colours, pressing and burnishing until the paper grain disappears. Black fur, like in “Black Panther”, takes more layers than anything else, because the colour lives in highlights you can barely see.

Halfway through I send a progress photo, and nothing leaves the studio until you're happy with it.