Don't fence me in ... Sandy Applegate

By Erin K. Quirk, Staff writer
Pagosa Springs Sun
July 7, 2005

Artists are said to have range if, among other things, they work in different media or their work is diverse enough to appear as though different artists created it.

Sandy Applegate has range and she is another surprise treasure found right here in Pagosa Springs. She draws in colored pencil and ink, paints in watercolor, works in two and three dimensions and pens intensely-detailed abstract pieces. Right now her biggest problem lies not in creating enough work, but creating enough in one series to show to galleries.

"I have like 20 different things I want to do a series on," said Applegate, who loves to read and cook and tend to her elaborate European-style garden outside. "I do about 100 things at once - I like to get a lot of things done."

It's fun walking through Applegate's Lake Hatcher home and studio. Her work hangs all over the walls and while it is diverse, after a bit of study, her style is unmistakable. Applegate does some representational work, some abstract and some more stylized work that is a combination of both. But she is not a western landscape painter. If she draws horses and cowboys, the cowboys will wear a sneaky grin, as in one she titled "Don't Fence Me In" or the horses will be drawn with just their behinds showing.

"I like to interpret the world in my own way," she said with a laugh.

Applegate moved to Pagosa Springs from Chicago where she spent many years in the corporate world as a software programmer and systems analyst. She majored in art and photography at the University of Illinois and worked in darkrooms in her early days out of college.

That darkroom time clearly informed much of her early work. A fan of cinema and stage, that work is dominated by repeating silhouettes of Charlie Chaplin and other movie stars in varying degrees of photographic exposure. Lines of gray to dark black figures control nearly all of that early work.

She has an upstairs room where her early work hangs. Walking through it is like watching a child grow. The work is hung chronologically and eventually becomes less graphically oriented and more focused on color, shape and whimsy. One later series on the wall is color pencil and watercolor study of cows and beauty queens, which she laughingly calls her "Texas series." The detail, symmetry and repetition are still there, but the growth into color is too.

The nice thing about Applegate's work is that she drifts in and out of completely different styles without losing herself in the process. Her early work is graphic and stark and her later abstract work is wild with color and shape. However, all of it is tight, detailed and accurate.

To wit, Applegate's work entitled "Seeds" is what she calls a study of either the macro or the micro - as though you could look through a telescope or a microscope and see the same thing. The work is pen and ink and color pencil and looks like a fuchsia, red and lavender fractal or surging underwater anemones. She calls these abstract pieces "loose," but they aren't, really. They are only loose in comparison to her early graphic work because tiny detail, composition and balance all come to the party.

She said the abstract work is more difficult for her than her representational pieces because she simply starts with a blank page and lets her instinct figure it out. When she starts, she said, she doesn't always know what she's drawing.

"It's harder to make them work," she said. "Everything doesn't always work out."

Another pen and ink and watercolor piece called "The Wheel of Life" features repeating figures, song lyrics - the inclusion of which is a favorite technique of hers - and thousands of tiny circles. The piece combines the best of Applegate's artistic worlds, repeating graphic figures, detail and colorful whimsy.

Right next to it on the wall hangs "After the Ball." While totally different from "Seeds" it is a good example of the combination of her styles. The repeating chorus girl figures speak to her early work and the watercolor circles behind them are more recent. The dancers are slim, long and faceless and appear to be just woman costumes hanging from chains. Applegate said this leaves the piece open to interpretation.

"It doesn't have to make perfect sense," said Applegate who recently sold the piece and said it is one of her favorites.

Applegate has no shortage of work and has begun marketing it. She has already had some success with a few galleries in a resort town in Wisconsin and is avidly seeking new markets for her work. She acknowledges that her work probably isn't what most people in Pagosa Springs are after. However a few of her pieces can be seen at The Back Door and the Pagosa Nursery Company.

What is most important to Applegate is that her work is entirely her own. She has painted Pagosa Peak and sold the painting, but that isn't where her heart is. When she looks at "Seeds" or a few of her other abstracts she said she sees something different every time and that keeps her interested.

"If I like to look at it, to me it's successful."