Sandra Manzi was born and raised in Toronto, and currently resides in Hamilton. She received her Diploma in Fine Arts/Experimental Arts from the Ontario College of Art (now OCADU) in Toronto, and then received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Guelph. She is a recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council, and has been a finalist for the Boynes Artist Award three times. Her paintings can be found in private collections throughout Canada, Europe, and the United States.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Through figurative painting, I wish to capture the banality of the everyday urban world. Using my own recomposed photographs, I create paintings which transform fragments of ordinary life into visual narratives conducive to contemplation and the viewer's imagination. While capturing everyday life, I wish to focus on ideas of the spaces in which we move and connect. Whether of street scenes, airports, museums, interiors, or rural landscapes; my paintings are both voyeuristic and self reflective depictions of my eavesdropping on the life around me. I'm interested in the people, places and things seen within everyday moments, mainly within the urban landscape, reflecting on the culture of the city, and what it means to be a stranger living amongst strangers.
Even though I work from photographs, I feel the painting has to offer something the photograph cannot: time, contemplation, and a heightened awareness of seeing. Modern digital technology allows me to gather an enormous amount of visual information, often combining multiple photographs taken over different moments or under different conditions. In that sense, the finished painting often represents an experience rather than a single instant. It becomes a constructed reality that is ultimately more faithful to my memory of the place than any individual photograph could be.