Artist Spotlight: Sandra Haney

Sandra Haney lives in Durham and has been painting for most of her life. Although she has experimented with printmaking, watercolour and acrylics over the years, oil painting remains the medium she returns to most often. “I keep coming back to oils,” she says. “The colours blend nicely and you can move it around a bit. You can change your mind as you’re going.”

Oil painting, she admits, has its disadvantages. The materials can be messy and expensive, and she prefers to use odourless thinners rather than traditional solvents because of both the smell and environmental considerations. Despite this, she values the flexibility that oils offer and the way they allow a painting to develop gradually.

Sandra rarely works on one artwork at a time, moving ideas between canvases as the work progresses. Sustainability is also something she considers both in relation to her subject matter and her practice, often painting over existing canvases and reusing what she already has in the studio.

For several years Sandra was involved with an urban sketchers group, producing drawings directly from observation while working outdoors. Although she no longer sketches as frequently as she once did, that experience continues to shape her approach. 

Urban sketching reinforced the value of direct observation and taught her to trust her initial responses. The discipline of making work quickly encouraged a level of spontaneity that remains present in her paintings today. “It’s the immediacy and being in the environment,” she says. “Sometimes it works just like that and it doesn’t need any more doing to it.”

This interest in immediacy extends beyond sketching. Even in the studio, Sandra prefers to begin directly on the canvas, preferring loose, gestural work to paintings that feel heavily worked over, “although sometimes it can be quite hard to stop at the right time,” she admits.

One series of paintings was inspired by railway journeys across the north of England, particularly along routes between Northumberland and Yorkshire. The works are not straightforward depictions of places seen from a carriage window. Instead, they combine fragments of landscape, reflections, movement and memory.

Sandra often records these journeys through photographs, brief notes and quick sketches made while travelling. Back in the studio, a painting begins with a colour combination glimpsed for only a few seconds before disappearing. “It might be a reflection of somebody’s red jacket in the window at the same time as we’re passing a ploughed field,” she explains.

Sound and movement are also present the work. Rather than documenting a route, Sandra is interested in reconstructing the experience. The vibration of the carriage and changing light become part of the structure of the painting, translated into colour, gesture and mark-making.

Although Sandra has sold paintings to people who recognise particular locations in her work, that was never her intention for making them. “It’s the atmosphere that I’m really interested in,” she explains. “The light, the season, the weather conditions at the time.”

Several recent paintings respond to her observation of the garden surrounding her home studio, specifically an elder tree, which has become a recurring feature in her work. She returns to this subject often, to capture seasonal changes and unexpected colour relationships. 

Like much of her work, these paintings are made quickly at first and then lived with for a while. She moves canvases between rooms, sometimes leaving them for weeks before she decides whether anything more needs to be done.

This year has brought further recognition for Sandra. Her painting Oranges & Hyacinths was selected for the Northern Summer Exhibition at Newcastle Arts Centre, where it sold during the exhibition.

Interest in Sandra’s paintings has continued with several works finding new homes at The Sanctuary Gallery in Newnham-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, where she is currently exhibiting as part of a group exhibition focused on allotments.

The show features paintings inspired by the allotments she remembers from her childhood in Oxfordshire, alongside works that reflect her long-standing fascination with gardens, sheds, and greenhouses. The exhibition continues until 3rd October 2026, with a number of paintings still available.

Sandra’s work is available to purchase at https://exhibtd.com/artists/sandra-haney

Header image: Sandra Haney, Coastal Path 2 (detail), Oil on canvas, 50cm x 40cm, 2024, £750