"Hilltop Grove"

6"x6" 

In each of her paintings the goal for Sandy is to capture the essential elements of a particular time and place, but in a process of reduction so that where and when it was painted becomes irrelevant. She begins by drawing the details and information that are seen in nature plein-air.  She then pares down the image in order to organize the design of the painting and eliminate what is not essential. She calls her paintings Modern Landscapes with a nod to the modernist painters of the mid-century in the Bay Area.

Growing up in Palo Alto, California, Sandy was an active student at the Palo Alto Art Center through high school.  She continued studio art classes and studied Art History at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

A 2013 Huffington Post interview reveals, "An intuitive artist who loves paint as a substance -- and who has a tendency to obliterate her imagery with painterly gestures -- Ostrau doesn't go all the way to abstraction. To do so would remove the emotional connection she wants viewers to have with her source material. "I'm not a fully abstract painter," she explains: "I want people to feel the landscape."

www.sandyostrau.com