Freedom of Youth
By Rosie Sandifer, Installed 1987
Rosie Sandifer is an artist of unquestionable talent and versatility. Persistence, determination, and hard work are hallmarks of her character. I’ve appreciated and respected Sandifer’s work since the beginning of my fine art career. She was a sculptor I admired, an award winning one, but I had no idea she was also an accomplished painter. She pretty much always painted, I came to discover, having received instruction from Bettina Steinke, Ray Froman, Jan Herring, and Frank Mason.
But, in 1975 when she came face-to-face with Edgar Degas’s, “Fourteen Year Old Ballerina” at the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art in New York, she was transfixed. It was then that she decided to lay down the brushes for a while and begin sculpting. Now, after many years, brushes and paint are once again her primary instruments of creative expression, and the subjects of choice have changed. She now primarily gives her attention to landscape painting, much of that en plein air.
With this new focus, she hasn’t missed a beat. Her paintings have been winning awards and her collectors and galleries continue to embrace her talent and abilities, both as sculptor as well as a painter.
