“I think of myself as a re-bloomer, rather than a late one,” says Sandra Blazel. The Oahu-raised artist bloomed the first time as a consultant and data processor during a successful 18-year business career on the Islands. Beginning in 1991, she bloomed a second time as an award-winning professional painter.

Blazel works with a variety of media, though her favorites are graphite and acrylics. All of her paintings depict Hawai’i and Hawaiian scenes and subjects. Her oeuvre ranges from florals and still lifes to landscapes and seascapes. Whether it’s crashing surf, a cut papaya -- or a rattan chair on a länai in the afternoon sun -- Blazel’s subjects are inevitably captured with bold, colorful vision.

Some of her artworks are strikingly photo-realistic. Others call to mind the energy and more-stylized images of the mid-century American painter Edward Hopper, one of the artists Blazel says she most admires. “I’m fascinated by Hopper’s choice of subject matter, which can be very ‘pedestrian,’” says Blazel. “While my style is dissimilar, I am inspired by the uncanny emotional mood he sets with his use of lights and shadows. Perhaps that’s what makes my paintings look so real.”

In 2003 Blazel was honored with the “Outstanding Newcomer Award” from the 25th Anniversary Japanese Chamber of Commerce “Commitment to Excellence” art exhibition. She received two honors in 2005: the Castle & Cooke Award for Artistic Innovation; and the People’s Choice Award at the Oahu Arts Center’s “Dreams” Art Show. Recent work has included commissions from various hotels across the Aloha State.

Growing up in Hawai’i certainly influenced Blazel’s art – but, in an unexpected way, so did her business career. Of the Island influence, she says she has fond memories of Oahu’s Manoa Valley, playing under her grandparents’ monkeypod tree and going to their house after a morning of building sandcastles next to an old canoe parked on the beach at Waikiki.

“When playtime was done,” she recalls, “Tutu (grandmother) would call us into a house where lauhala mats graced the floors and glass floats, collected by my mother in her childhood, sat on the bookshelf. My memories of childhood and of stories told to me of a Hawai’i gone by serve as my sources of inspiration.”

As a child Blazel did frequent pencil drawings but little painting. She graduated from Honolulu’s prestigious Punahou School and later majored in painting, drawing, and graphic arts at the University of California at Los Angeles. She received a Ford Foundation grant for her artwork.

When Blazel finally transitioned from businesswoman to full time artist, she was initially concerned that the linear, left-brain commercial world might be having too much of an impact on her right-brained artistic expression. Eventually she realized that business expertise is just as useful to artists as it is to data processors and consultants.

“I used to be afraid that I was merely a good technician, but fear can help drive you to be what you really want to, and can, be,” she says. “I believe time and experience have turned me into an artist… Sometimes,” she muses, “I wish I had started my art business sooner, but the advantage of working all those years in the hi-tech industry taught me all the business ropes, which most artists never get to experience. So maybe it was just meant to be. There is the business side of me and the artistic side.”

Blazel admits that she has not completely mastered the left-brain, right-brain dichotomy. Today, however, she views this conflict as a source of creative ferment rather than as an artistic impediment. “My right and left brain fight with each other all the time,” she grins. ”I’m always open to trying new approaches and reinventing myself. It’s part of being creative. Even though I’m not a big Picasso fan, he is a great example of someone who changed things all the time.”

Portraits are not Blazel’s main focus, but a special portrait of a friend’s child helped convince her to become a fulltime artist. “I did a portrait for a friend of mine who had a child at St. Jude’s Hospital,” Blazel recalls. “The boy was dying of leukemia. All I could think was, ‘Here was a child of 18, a beautiful child, with a disease that took some of his outer beauty away.’
 
“I did kind of a tough-boy rendition of him in a jacket with his cap turned around which made his mom cry, because that was how she wanted to remember him. I was lucky enough to get to visit him just before he died. I truly believe he was the angel on my shoulder who helped me decide that painting is what I what I wanted to do forever.”

Today Blazel still makes use of her business expertise, but she also states firmly: “I don’t want to do anything else but paint.” The re-bloomer adds: “I am blessed to be able to see something and interpret it in so many different ways.”

Sandra Blazel is represented by Cedar Street Galleries and Haleiwa Art Gallery. Her work may be seen at various galleries on Oahu and the neighboring islands. Selected works may be viewed online at www.sandrablazelfineart.com.

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