To bring something new to canvas and paper, unfolding each piece to a place of vibrancy and positivity, is always Judith's goal. At one point in her art and writing career she went to graduate school for science and the graceful intertwining biochemical pathways were, to her, possibility incarnate. At graduation she crossed the stage for her diploma and went back to painting and writing with her love of the beauty and flow of science in hand and now she works to put a lens on synergy and possibility through color, line, words, and design.
As a painter Judith uses a constellation of colors and combines them with the beauty, rhythm, and patterns of the natural world. She had the honor of being chosen by the Amesbury Cultural Council in partnership with the City of Amesbury to paint a 48 ft x 7 ft crosswalk for their Walk This Way project and she had a wonderful time mixing the basic red, yellow, and blue street colors so that she could create an array of colors and paint the street with a colorful brush. She named the crosswalk "Prism Pathway" so people could have a colorful path of line, design, vibrancy, and optimism as they crossed the street.
And one day, a walk in New York City from a subway stop to the wonderful (and now sadly closed) New York Central Art Supply turned into a joyful excursion that Judith wrote about in her poem Art Supplies From Heaven, published in the New York Times. Her work has been published in a variety of other publications as well including The Forest Prime Eden, published by Tiny Seed Literary Journal and Better Than Any Alligator, published by This I Believe. In all her writing, Judith delves into feelings that can bring the challenges of our world to light while also pinpointing the poignancies of realization and renewal.
At Fitchburg Art Museum's 85th Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft, Judith's painting "Nesting (Home)" was awarded the Saara Parker Painting Prize and her large-scale drawing, "Go Sign", was part of the Museum of Art's "On the Edge" exhibition at the University of New Hampshire. Judith's painting "Lighter Than Air" was recently chosen to be in Danforth Museum's Annual Juried Exhibition and she is also a lending artist with the Corporate Art Loan Program at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and through their program her work is on view in a variety of corporations in the Boston area. Judith has also painted posts for a butterfly garden, loves exploring new mediums and templates, and has taught herself graphic design as a way to transform her work into new media.
Judith's work is part of several corporate and private collections and has been in both solo and group shows. She is also a speaker and has given talks on her favorite subjects - love and art and the pathways of possibility at, among others, Voices on the Green and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT.
Lisa Gallay wrote in the Valley Advocate, “It’s as if in painting an interior landscape, Sanders is replaying the parts of her scientific study that science itself could not describe: the grandeur and mystical energy of growing life forms, the elegant shapes of creatures and plants, the way they retain their elegance and their curiously visible power and vitality at the microscopic level. Sanders’ work represents a visual expression of both the questions that remain where science leaves off and of the images that haunt a sensitive consciousness.” from Sweet Science: Judith Ellen Sanders: A biologist’s training, an artist’s eye by Lisa Gallay, The Valley Advocate
