Andrew Saunders
Painter / GRAFT Associate
Andrew Saunders is a landscape painter living on the Isle of Wight. Andrew has been drawing and painting for most of his life and in 2022 became a full time artist.
Predominantly, Andrew’s paintings are in acrylics and feature the sea and landscape of the Isle of Wight, especially the Sandown area, where he lives.
Andrew is a member of the Isle of Wight Art Club and joined the National Acrylic Painters Association (NAPA) in 2024. He has exhibited on the Isle of Wight and with NAPA and in 2025 one of his paintings was accepted for the ING Discerning Eye exhibition at Mall Galleries in London.
In June 2025 Andrew took part in Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year (Heat 5, Pod 8) at St James’s Park, which aired on Sky Arts on 21 January 2026. This experience had a huge impact on Andrew’s painting and most of his work in 2025 was either done in preparation for the programme or was a reaction to it.
In recent years Andrew has taken up plein air painting and there is now a distinct split between studio work, (which takes longer and can be more experimental) and plein air work, where the challenge is to produce a response to the scene in a quick and simplified way – ‘I have come to appreciate the immediacy that plein air painting brings and it’s more and more important to my art practice’.
Andrew’s colour palette is usually vibrant and he often experiments with different ways of applying paint to create pattern and texture. Simplification of shape and form is also key and Andrew often deliberately paints in a way that makes adding detail difficult.
‘There is a constant push and pull between my instinct to interpret what I see in a very detailed way and my need to simplify.The more I paint (especially outside) the more I focus on creating an immediate response to my surroundings and the less I worry about getting things “right”. I’m looking for a sense of energy and a way to drill down to the essentials of what I see. In 2025 I concentrated on speed and I found this to be a really useful way of cutting out the noise. If you don’t have much time, you really can’t spend it on anything that is not essential.’
E: islepaintart@gmail.com
Clouds Over Ventnor Downs / Painted in sections using a palette knife and heavily textured.
Tennyson Tree / Completed March 2025. Painted in sections and the paint scratched into to reveal the vibrant underpainting. Entry for Landscape Artist of the Year.
Intersecting Dinghies / Inspired by dinghies in the distance in Sandown Bay. Andrew was struck by the way they seemed to almost crash into each other.
Brook Beach Study / "After LAOTY I needed a break from complicated paintings, so I started to paint mainly coastal scenes round the Island with a small group of artists. I really wanted to get back to basic shapes and tones, so used A4 acrylic paper and a large brush. I’ve been surprised at how effective it can be to just concentrate on the big shapes. If I learned anything from LAOTY it’s that limitations can be really useful creatively."
Bembridge Beach Study / Plein Air Painting. 'It was a freezing day and there is quite a lot of sand in the painting.'
Los Altos Trees / 4 hour study in preparation for LAOTY. A view of Los Altos Park in Sandown, before the trees were pollarded.