About Sandra Marshall

 

Early on, Sandra showed a talent and love for art. A New York native, Sandra attributes her passion for art, and her thirst for learning, to childhood trips into New York City to visit the museums, and galleries. She took off running in the art world and never looked back. 

Sandra worked as a portrait painter and mural artist throughout her college years. She also worked as an art director for 3-Ball Productions in Hollywood. She also painted backdrops for the Disney Channel and worked on set designs where she had to make large sculptures for the sets.

In 2000, Sandra co-created an inventive company in Italy called “Porta a Porta”,  which means door to door in Italian. She would bring aspiring artists from the United States to Italy, and while under her instruction, her students would learn to paint as they were surrounded by the stunning Tuscan Hillsides. At this time Sandra started selling her collection of contemporary botanical paintings to go along with her travels. 

After meeting her husband at the Phoenix Art Museum, getting married and having two children, Sandra opened a brick and mortar studio in Phoenix, Arizona in 2014 called Be...An Artist Studio, which welcomed aspiring artists to come and learn many different types of art. Paint nights, sculpting nights, comedy nights, live entertainment and eventually a cooking school, all came together and helped to bring the community creating together. Her studio was featured on every local channel in Arizona, displaying her passions for the arts. After five years, Sandra closed up her brick and mortar studio to pursue creating art full time in 2019. She also started hosting huge painting events with up to five hundred painters at a time at different venues. She also built two tiny mobile painting studios which she would use for travel and events.  This continued until the pandemic, where Sandra hunkered down, creating art full time in her private studio. 

Sandra's passion for food art started when her young daughter declared she would no longer eat meat when she was only five years old. She dove into this art form durning the pandemic and started her Facebook page which has over 70,000 followers. Sandra started exploring with fruits and vegetables to make cooking more fun, and was hooked by the colors of nature.  She would write stories about her dinnertime art pieces so her children would see the magic in produce. Her art pieces from food became a natural addition to her other mediums, and now she has authored two food art books. One book, 'The Razzleberry Wackadoodle Garden' is for children, and 'One Hot Night at the Veggie Bar' is for adults. She traveled the country going into schools and giving presentations on looking at healthy fruits and vegetables through the eyes of an artist. Her award winning books were featured on numerous television networks and in a range of media.

She now creates food art pieces for private collectors from around the world. She creates the custom pieces at home and photographs them in the perfect lighting and has an underground following.

When Sandra was making plans in 2022 to go on tour for her food art, a giant dog landed on her doorstep looking for a family. After trying to find his owners, and learning all the rescues and shelters were full, she had to keep him until she found the perfect home. She didn't know at that time, he would be part of their family. They just lost their other dog and didn't think they were ready for another quite yet. Then, while searching for his forever home, they all fell in love with that pitbull named Theodore. Now Theodore is a main focus in Sandra's life and art, shifting her focus to helping rescues through her art. She has a custom line of oil paintings and prints that are coming up and has had non stop commissions for her food art creations. 

Sandra loves the journey of being an artist. She is not making any plans and continues to Be... because you never know who will show up on your doorstep.