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By Michelle Mastro Portrait photography by Colin Miller/Strauss

Art can have a powerful impact on a viewer, whether that ’s inspiring feelings of sadness, joy, sublimity or wonder. Though her art does this and more, artist Adrienne Sandusky makes paintings meant to inspire conversation.

Adrienne’s perspective on art is a unique one. She majored in business and accounting in college originally but went back to school later in her 30s for art, she says. “In college, I started to hit the ground running in the art world. I work as a makeup and wardrobe stylist and utilize a lot of color, so I think that initially inspired my work along with traveling. After graduation, I continued to draw and paint, and it was something I just needed to do.”

In her pieces, color, shape and lines dance and sprawl across the canvas. The pieces are abstract, and thus while they have no clear message, the point of her art, Adrienne says, is to take the deeply personal experience the viewer has with the art and inspire him or her to share it with fellow viewers and compare notes.

“Depending on the viewer’s vantage point, they will have a different perspective than the viewer standing next to them. I am challenging them to hold a space to have that conversation, allowing it to evolve organically by really listening to the other person’s take on the art,” says Adrienne. “Sometimes we spend too much time on our own thoughts and not on conservation.” Hence seeing things differently and sharing diverse opinions is the point.

But that doesn’t mean the conversation has to be cloaked in seriousness. Actually, a sense of “play” is also the goal of her work. “Through the pandemic, my art evolved. Within a year, the circles started forming,” she says. Adrienne had done watercolor on lines and circles before, but now she had graduated to producing larger scale pieces with huge circles. “To me, the circles became playful and reminded people that a conversation can be playful and add fun to the day.”

The circles and lines, even color, look random, but they aren’t. In many of her pieces, she starts with acrylic or oil paint to create a background then layers in paint pens, oil pastels, gold leaf or gold foil on top. It’s an organic multimedia approach to creating art. “While creating, I’ll step back and look at a composition and see what I need to add to balance everything out,” she says.

“I place shapes in different spaces, allowing the eye to dance all over the painting. A lot of people have commented on that,” she says. “I think about the viewer’s experience of my art in that way.” She lays out color to draw the eye from left to right, and viewers must step back and see the overall painting time and again to take in everything. “People interested in my work want a fun experience, or at least, a piece to add something playful to their home.”

Those interested in purchasing Adrienne Sandusky’s work can find her on Instagram. She will have a show at 31 Art Gallery until April 8th and at The Royal opening March 9th through May 22, 2023. She currently has a piece hanging at the Angad Arts Hotel. See stlouishomesmag. com for more photos and resources.

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