Sandy Palasti is a contemporary abstract artist whose path to painting was anything but traditional. After a career as a pediatric ENT surgeon, she left medicine at age 45 to pursue a different kind of exploration—one rooted in color, texture, and form.
Endlessly experimental, Sandy works in acrylics, oils, inks, and pastels, blending a scientist’s curiosity with an artist’s intuition. Her bold color choices and gestural strokes create abstract florals, figures, and landscapes that pulse with energy, memory, and emotion. Each canvas is an invitation to feel as much as to see.
Her work has been shown at The Palm Beach Show, The Hamptons Fine Art Fair, and The Other Art Fair Dallas, and is represented by Sorelle Gallery (Westport, CT), ADC Fine Art (Cincinnati), Liza Pruitt Gallery (Richmond, VA), and Five3 Gallery (Laguna Beach). Sandy lives in Charlotte with her husband and dogs, happily splitting time between her freshly renovated studio, hiking trails, and visits to her daughter in Austin.
Statement
My process is intuitive and layered, guided less by a fixed plan than by a willingness to discover. Marks accumulate, surfaces shift, and the work begins to speak back to me. Sometimes it’s messy, sometimes it’s graceful, but it always feels alive. That dialogue is a reminder that becoming is never linear—it loops, circles, falters, and surprises. Each painting carries those shifts, holding both the struggle and the resilience that come with staying open to what emerges.
I want my work to tell true stories. Not just the golden moments, but also the struggles and the ordinary days in between. I believe life is made up of all three in equal measure—one-third hardship, one-third daily routine, and one-third fleeting beauty. To honor all of them is to be honest, and honesty is at the heart of my practice. Abstraction allows me to embody this truth rather than illustrate it, creating a language of marks and textures that can hold contradiction, vulnerability, and strength in the same breath.
In the end, painting is my way of taking up space in a world that often asks us to shrink. Each work becomes both declaration and offering: a way of saying I am here, I will not vanish, and I invite you to find your own reflection in that same act of becoming.