Sandra Nicolaides

Biography

Sandra has worked in the arts all her professional life, starting with dancing in blockbuster musicals across Australia and New Zealand, then acting with various theatre companies in Australia, England and Wales. She then went on to receive a degree in Fine Art (Sculpture and Cinematography) at the SA School of Art, after winning the Harry P Gill Memorial Prize and Medal as the most outstanding student.
Sandra has lectured at various tertiary institutions including WAAPA (WA), the Tasmanian School of Art, Hartley College, Magill (SA) and Dartington College (UK) and was the inaugural Chair of the Tasmanian Arts Industry Board. She travelled Europe on a research grant from the Australia Council and wrote a Poste-Graduate Diploma course for the Tasmanian School of Art Summer School.
In Canberra, as the Cultural Planner, Sandra initiated and delivered the first electronic cultural pam of its kind for the ACT (Canberra's Identity and Atmosphere Online - 'CIAO') and then proposed and facilitated a larger project involving 18 regional Council to develop their own cultural maps using the template she had created. This was launched at the Australian National Museum as the ACT Regional Cultural Map. Sandra then presented it at the Powerhouse Museum (NSW) and an International Heritage Symposium in Yogyakarta (Indonesia). She received various awards for her cultural planning work, including the American Planning Institute's International Small Town Planning Award.
In 2014, Sandra at last had the time and space to paint - and this obsession has continued and grown to the present day. She paints intuitively - that is, letting herself be driven by the faces and situations she discovers in each canvas she commences. She starts by randomly applying paint to a canvas with a palette knife and then stands back and inspects the results, eventually seeing faces emerge. Then her works really starts in teasing out the characters with charcoal and oil paint - always true to what she can see in the canvas. The titles in her paintings always come last - when she has fully discovered each scene.
Most of her paintings talk about connections - connections between the characters - or sometimes, with you - the audience.