Sandy Melchiori is an oil painter and a landscape designer who paints big, bold canvases and boards with liberal brushstrokes creating landscapes, florals, cows, and roosters.

All of her art pieces pull the viewer into her fun and world of bold color.

She lives and paints in her studio and the surrounding landscapes of her hometown in Sisters, Oregon. Painting her own interpretations of her surroundings, travel, and beautiful subjects has and is not only her passion but a lifelong goal. She finds visual stimulation from everything she sees and experiences.

Born in Monterey, California, and raised on a horse farm in the Midwest, Sandy has been painting all sizes of canvases, while gravitating to the bigger ones over the last 30 years.
Growing up on 40 acres with lots of nature, gardens, and animals, gave her the freedom to explore, imagine, and create art in a nonconventional way.

Her love of color was cultivated from a young age. Both her mom and her grandma were avid gardeners and outdoor enthusiasts. Summers with her grandma in Westchester, California she spent pruning and watering the avocado, lime, and grapefruit trees. She would wander through the garden and admire her grandmother’s tropical plants and flowers. Her mom taught her the practical side of gardening and pushed her to draw and paint.

Her most creative work happened for the first time with her big canvas called Whose World Is It? This is the one where she let her imagination run wild and began her signature thick paint application with a palette knife and big brushes. It is a wild scene with animals taking over a cityscape. Monkeys embracing, elephants sprouting out of buildings, giraffes scouting the skyline, and cheetah walking on water, a flamboyant flamingo, and an eagle swooping into the city make up this stimulating composition.

After painting Whose World Is It?, the floodgate opened and Sandy started her series Play On Words which included iconic pieces such as: Roadster and Roosters, Lime Crush, and more! All of these paintings juxtaposed unlikely subjects making great conversation pieces that are also very visually stimulating. She also paints landscapes, florals, mountain scenes, cows, scenes from her travels, and dogs. There are many chapters in her portfolio of work.

As an art advocate in the schools, she volunteered many hours in her kid’s (Angelo and Sofia) classrooms to expose and teach elementary school children art history and how to create.

One of her happiest times was when kids in her town of Sisters see her and say to their parents with unbridled enthusiasm- “That is my art teacher!” Giving her knowledge and passion for art to the children and watching them become confident artists that draw, paint, and articulate how they feel about art masterpieces was one of the best achievements for her community. In addition to children’s art education, Sandy has a degree in landscape architecture and has practiced this career path for 33+ years. She and her husband own and operated a landscape design build company in Sisters, Oregon. Her team has built many of her master plans which have enhanced the lives of many of their clients with outdoor spaces they have lived in and connected to the natural world.

Currently, she has been doing plein air painting in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in rural Oregon, and sometimes crossing the state lines into southern Washington wine country where she paints the vineyards and also crosses the Pacific Ocean to the Big Island of Hawaii where she paints tropical scenes. Another place she is drawn to is Europe specifically her roots in Italy. Gardens with their many flowers and floral bouquets will always weave into her repertoire of work. Most often she will have 5 paintings of varying sizes going on at once in her studio.

And there is always the 3-5 day paint road trip in the works. Paints, brushes, a portable easel, pizza boxes to transport her work, and a backpack packed into her wagon then traipsing through the country to find her next paint location in the rural towns and vineyards of southern Washington, orchard of Hood River, magenta-colored hills and plateaus of south Central Oregon, Paisley, Oregon, Sandy embarks on her next painting.

“I have to keep it fresh and am always ready to work outside in the fresh air and light to interpret the many nuances of color in nature and for me the palette is endless! “I have always admired Picasso who painted until he was 98 years old and his creations were endless. I too will keep painting many canvases with Vibrant COLOR!”

Working in a rented cabin on a snowy day.

I have been traveling in and painting the rural towns and landscapes of Oregon and Washington.  This is where I set up my plein air easel and capture the naturally choreographed pastoral scenes of mountains, meadows, pastures, old barns, vineyards, and gardens in an abundance of color and emerge myself in a lifestyle I’ve romanticized about most of my life. A typical painting day on one of these 4-day adventures include: starting with 2 cups of strong coffee at the local bakery coffee shop, load cooler refreshed with water, tea, local cheese and artisan bread, seasonal fruit, suit up with layers of clothing for all weather changes, organize easel, paints, pizza boxes to transport wet paintings. After scoping out locations I am going to paint the night before, I head to the first location where I paint on 8″ x 10″ or 9″ x 12″ on board. When the light changes and before the painting becomes overworked, I stop and relocate and begin a new one. I will add subtle touches of detail later back at the room I’ve rented during my stay. And the goal is not to lose the freshness and energy or feeling that I felt while painting. These small paintings I create on location are filled with direct brushstrokes of paint while minimizing extraneous detail that is not necessary to the composition’s strength.