Born in New York City, Sandy Litchfield lives and works in Amherst, Massachusetts where she is an Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Department of Architecture. She received her BFA from the University of Colorado in Boulder and her MFA from UMass Amherst. In 2007 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been recognized with grants and commissions from the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority, Public Art for Public Schools, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Puffin Foundation. Litchfield has exhibited in numerous museums including the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, The Fitchburg Art Museum, The Portland Art Museum and The Hunterdon Museum. Her exhibitions have been selected for review by The Brooklyn Rail, The Boston Phoenix, New American Paintings and The Boston Globe.

STATEMENT:

Landscape is never a neutral backdrop; it is the medium through which perception, memory, and belonging take form. My paintings explore this encounter through landscape theory, phenomenology, and the ineffable “qualia” of lived experience. They echo Fernando Pessoa’s sense of being both inside and outside oneself—an intimacy with place entwined with longing.

Growing up in New York State– moving between city, suburbia, and upstate, I came to understand landscape as porous and plural: at once solace, loss, and return. This layered belonging continues to shape my practice.

Each painting unfolds slowly from photographs, sketches, and digital renderings, accumulating layers of color, erasure, and revision. Surfaces hold memory, registering shifts in light, atmosphere, and mood. Materially, they oscillate between precision and dissolution—line work and vibrant color balanced between abstraction and intimacy. What emerges is landscape as interlocutor: companions rendered in devotion and awe.