About the Artist
An award winning contemporary Brazilian artist from Rio de Janeiro, Sandra Nunes is in love with her native city, her main source of inspiration. Strolling through its urban, suburban and bucolic sites, she interprets and recreates in a passionate mood the relationship between shapes and colors, testifying the routine of its inhabitants. Most of her work is plein air, done in one or more painting sessions in oil, charcoal, watercolor or soft pastels. She opens her easel wherever there is something that calls her attention, she is compelled to paint and share
Bachelor in Letters and Arts by Rio de Janeiro Federal University. Sandra Nunes was exposed to Great Art at some point in her life travelling abroad, getting in contact with originals by Rembrandt, Velasquez, Caravaggio, Frans Halls, J.S Sargent and her all time favorite painter, Joaquin Sorolla and Bastida. She is moved by the depiction of light describing form and excelent drawing skills of this Spanish Master. Sandra Nunes often creates her painting on the city streets, where inhabitants and passers by, who are frequently her subject, often offer to purchase her work before the artist has made her last brushstroke.
Sandra Nunes is a full time painter, bringing to her work all her background studies of the great masters, throwing a poetic look at the urban landscape without loosing its contemporary feeling.
The artist teaches private and small groups workshops in her studio and plein air painting around the world.
Honfleur
Curacao Netherland Antilles
“Plein Air Painting has a special poetic. It demands from the artist an extreme professionalism in search of more and more satisfactory results. Besides technique, it is essential the knowledge and understanding that art can come from the sensitive nature without being just a copy. When the motif is Rio de Janeiro, it is much more challeging as the city is among the most painted ones in the world. Then the artist must offer to the observer something new related to expressiviness and the visual dialogue with what is represented.
That´s exactly what Sandra Nunes offers us. By means of color she manages to give her beloved city an intense movement. This happens through the play of light and shade integrating the urban architecture with the most diverse themes as carnival or popular open markets.
By emphasizing the curvaceous lines in a dreamlike impressionistic atmosphere, the artist rescues the poetry of the city and establishes an amazing dialogue with nature that surrounds its urban face reasuring to the observer that Rio de Janeiro is still a "Wonderful City" and that Sandra Nunes` canvases know how to show it very well." by Oscar D´Ambrosio, in "Carioca Impressions*
" I hope my paintings are not just iconographic representations, but reflect also a deep insight into the subject. Some of these works may display the beauty I see in Nature and the passion for the pigments whether oil, pastel or charcoal. A painting with integrity speaks for itself."
Sandra Nunes is conscious that being an artist is a lifetime learning process, she attends life drawing studio with the Brazilian contemporary great master Lydio Bandeira de Mello and she also coordinates a figure drawing group once a week. She states that this practice is the basis for any artist, no matter his expression being figurative or abstract
An award winning artist in Quick Draws and Painting Competitions, her work can be found in several public and private collections( national and international) and in Corporations as well, such as Rio-Zoo Foundation, Engineering Military Institute, Brazilian Army Chemical Laboratory, Brazilian Army High Command School, Historic Museum, Rio de Janeiro Military Police, Brazilian Navy, Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Casa de Saúde São José etc.
She has been featured in prominent national and International publications.on newspapers
On TV News
On Buildings!
She has been featured in "O Globo" newspaper as the First Prize winner in a Juried Show " Rio de Janeiro Landscapes" when one of her paintins won the front cover of the book 'Chronicles of the City" published by Litteris.
The artist had her project selected in a contest "Art on the Wall" when she was comissioned to paint a mural with dimensions of 6,30 x 13,80 feet (1,90m x 4,20m ) for a Hospital(Casa de Saúde São José). The theme was inspired on a series of paintings done on location for more than one year in Largo do Boticário. The event was well attended and it was broadcasted on a Brazilian TV network when she was invited for an interview.
"Working in large dimensions is a very rewarding experience as it stresses the gestural character of my brushstrokes and reinforces the tactile quality of the painting". 
Sandra Nunes is a representative member for Latin America of LAI - Landscape Artists International, member of IPAP - International Plein Air Painters and associate member of Chave Mestra - Santa Teresa Visual artists Association
Feel free to contact the artist by email, leave your impressions, for eventual orders, workshops or commissions. We ship paintings anywhere inside of Brazil or abroad. (Please check the Testimonials session.)
*Oscar D´Ambrosio is a journalist and has a Master Degree in Visual Arts by UNESP, integrates the International Association of Art Critics (AICA - Brazil branch)
