Sandra Dutton
A Writer Who Paints
Like my dad, I have a passion for words and pictures. One of my fondest memories is sitting with him at the kitchen table drawing. I remember making a man in a hat. Like most children I drew the hat like a cake on a platter, perched on a circle, but he showed me–first with his own hat, then in a diagram–how the hat rests down over the ears. I was about four and felt very grownup when he told me that.
Another lesson involved drawing the house behind us–a three-story white shingled house. I was caught up in drawing every shingle, wondering how I would ever finish, and the drawing kept getting worse and worse. You should suggest, said my dad. He showed me how a few horizontals attached to short verticals could imply an entire wall. Magical.
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Dutton obtained a B.A. in Fine Arts at Indiana University where she studied life drawing with William Bailey. She also studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy with Paul Wilhelm, a student of Hans Hofmann.
While living in California she won first place and runner-up for Best of Show at the Gallo Art Annual. She also designed clothes from Thai silk on Union Street in San Francisco and was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle.
While in Maine, Dutton showed at the University of New England; the University of Southern Maine Atrium Art Gallery; Gleason Fine Arts, Boothbay, “The View from Richard Ford’s” painting exhibited in conjunction with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance’s Garden Party; River Arts Gallery; Maine Art Gallery, Wiscasset (a one-woman show); and the Belfast Poetry Festival, (producing a series of paintings on Chimney Farm, the home of writers Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth); She also created the commemorative painting for the opening of the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
Recently, Dutton has shown at the Taylor Street Gallery in Savannah (Fall 2022) and at Gallery Espresso in Spring 2023. In September 2022, a cover story about her work, “Energy, Obsessions, and Discoveries,” by Beth Logan, was featured in Connect Savannah. In Spring of 2024, she will show once again at Gallery Espresso.
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In addition to her art degree, Dutton has a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Louisville and an M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She has published poetry and essays as well as six books for children (illustrating three) with Atheneum; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A seventh book, which she is now illustrating, will be published this spring by Monte Ceceri of Savannah.
Dutton’s musical Just a Matter of Time, for which she wrote the book and lyrics and designed the scenery, played successfully in Catskill, New York, and she hopes to bring it to Savannah.
Dutton was chair of the English Department at New York Institute of Technology. At various workshops, she has taught both painting and writing for students from Kindergarten through college graduate. She now teaches writing online for Excelsior University and gives private lessons in painting for interested students. She and her husband, Wayne Sheridan, are happy to make their home in Savannah.