"Sandra, something happens to you that's completely different when you have a brush in your hand."

September 7, 2023 - Artist Sandra Frankel looks at California, and paints it, in her own, unique way, with bold colors and passionate brushstrokes. Raised in what she describes as a "rundown beach house" in Malibu, she believes art was something intrinsic to her soul. By age three, she'd already declared she would become an artist.

Today, Frankel has an intaglio print, "Players in the Game," in the permanent collection of the Tweed Museum in Duluth, Minnesota. Other paintings of hers hang in numerous private collections in the United States, and are on view at the 7811 Gallery on Melrose Avenue through October 13. She'll be giving an Artist's Talk there on Sunday, September 10 from 6-8 pm.

Frankel's journey to become a celebrated California artist has not come easily. During her last year of art school in 1987, she developed chronic fatigue syndrome and has struggled with it ever since. "It's hard for me to separate the art from health issues that affect my level of function. My output is not like someone who has a lot of energy," she says.

On the positive side, Frankel had a mentor in Suzanne Bothwell of UCLA through the 1990s. Bothwell told Frankel "something pivotal," Frankel says. "'Sandra, something happens to you that's completely different when you have a brush in your hand."

Sandra enjoys finding emotional resonance in simple things. " Whether it's found in an alleyway, a lit lamp post, light filtering through leaves, tangled branch-shadows falling on a face – there is something which strikes my heart and draws me to my subject. I want to catch hold of that spark, play with it, transfigure it and share it."

Similarly, Sandra's choice of human models come from random encounters that strike an emotional chord. The painting "Nadia Pondolfo," of a dark-haired woman standing in a meditative pose, was of a woman Sandra met at the gym. "We were working out, and I asked her if she would sit for me," Sandra says. "You know how people in LA have a really anxious personality? But she was really centered and calm. And when she stood up she was just as chill. I tried to have the aura of calm in the painting."

Another painting, "Harvey," shows a sharp-eyed man with an apparently forceful personality. He was a man Sandra met in the Venice canals who was actually from New York. After he flirted with her, she asked to paint him. "He ended up being painted multiple times," Sandra says. They still meet when he comes to town.

Sandra lives in Santa Monica with her husband, Gadi. His portrait also hangs in the gallery exhibit. She lives in a dingbat apartment, and that's the subject of a series of her paintings.

"A dingbat is a very boxy apartment building constructed in the 1950's, when there was a housing crunch and older structures were taken down and replaced. They were nicknamed Dingbats, there was a kind of silliness about them, they have mid century modern design, there was a kind of silly space age influence," she says.

"I got interested in those buildings because I'm a romantic at heart. At first I hated them. But I came around to kind of enjoy them to see that there's something quintessentially Californian about them. They contribute something unique to the LA esthetic."

"I always seek light in my environment," she says.

CALIFORNIA PAINTINGS by Sandra Frankel runs through October 13 at 7811 Gallery, 7811 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA  90046. 

The ARTIST'S TALK is on Sept.10th from 6-8pm. More information is at https://www.7811gallery.com/currentexhibition