Sally was born and grew up in rural Maine along the Penobscot River in the 1950’s. Summers were spent at a family camp on Spruce Mountain Lake in remote Washington County. “Our only neighbors were the loons and the evening whippoorwills.” To this day the natural world is her healer and inspiration.
Art making came later in life following a career in Nutrition. After receiving an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1990 she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where she lives and paints today. Sally still returns to Maine every summer and was awarded an artist residency by the Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation on Norton Island.
Her work is in collections throughout the United States and she has shown her work internationally in France and Japan. She has had several solo shows in Santa Fe and Albuquerque along with participating in numerous group shows across the United States. The Albuquerque Journal named her Artist of the Year in 2012.
As a long time gardener and keeper of bees, she has used the wax she collects from her hives in her paintings. She mixes a small amount of cold wax paste with the oil paint. There is a softness the wax brings and her unique cold wax technique achieves an inner luminosity that captures and rebroadcasts a glowing ambient light.