Bio
Sandy Muraca is a visual artist based in Richmond, Virginia. Working across painting, collage, thread, and textile processes, she creates abstract mixed-media works rooted in the relationship between lived experience, place, and material. Her practice brings the intuitive language of painting into conversation with the structure, repetition, and materiality of weaving.
Muraca’s work is rooted in the landscapes of Virginia, where she has lived and worked since 1987. From the Blue Ridge and Piedmont to the fall line of the James River, this lived landscape has become an internal geography shaped by memory, passage, and time. Rather than depicting landscape, Muraca draws upon its accumulated presence through relationships of color, line, material, and form. Her recent work is characterized by a tension between intuition and order, irregularity and geometry, atmosphere and edge.
Muraca has pursued sustained studio and professional development in painting, abstraction, tapestry and cloth weaving, and textile and material-based practices with artists and educators in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In 2026, Muraca presented Open Studio: A Ten-Year Retrospective, 2016–2026 in Richmond, Virginia, featuring work from a decade of studio practice alongside her most recent body of work.
CV
Born 1964, Bethesda, Maryland
Virginia-based since 1987; lives and works in Richmond
EXHIBITIONS
2026
Open Studio: A Ten-Year Retrospective, 2016–2026, Richmond, VA
SELECTED ART EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
2025
Artist Development Group, 15-week international online artist mentoring program (six-artist cohort), led by Caron Penney, tapestry artist and educator, Atelier Weftfaced, UK
2024
Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry, online tapestry weaving course with Rebecca Mezoff, tapestry artist and educator, USA
2024
Independent Studio Practice: Raw Fleece Processing and Fiber Spinning — scouring, carding, and spinning wool; self-directed study
2023
Creative Visionary Program, 14-week online artist development program with Nicholas Wilton, artist and founder of Art2Life, USA
2022
The Artist’s Mindset, 12-week international online artist coaching program with Cheryl Taves, Insight Creative, Canada
2022
School of Weaving, comprehensive online handweaving curriculum using floor looms, led by Jane Stafford, master weaver and educator, Canada
2021
The Language of Design and The Language of Color, online courses with Mark Eanes, Professor Emeritus, California College of the Arts, Mark Eanes Academy, USA
2021
Abstracting the Landscape, online painting course with Lewis Noble, Lewis Noble Studio, UK
2020
An Introduction to Appliqué: Working with Silk Organza and Silk Organza Portraiture, online courses with Emily Jo Gibbs, textile artist, UK
2020
Material Thinking: Slow Stitching Practice, online course with Claire Wellesley-Smith, textile artist and educator, UK
2019
Woodcut Portrait Printmaking, workshop with Barry O’Keefe, Visual Arts Center of Richmond, Richmond, VA
2018
Drawing, Beginning Watercolor, and Gestural Watercolor, courses at Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA
2017
Painting, Still Life, Drawing, and Sketching, online courses with Will Kemp, Will Kemp Art School, UK
2017
Byzantine Iconography: Panagia Glykophilousa (egg tempera on board), six-day intensive workshop with Daniel Neculae, visiting iconographer from Romania, Annandale, VA
2016
Russian Orthodox Iconography (egg tempera and gold leaf), five-day intensive workshop, Prosopon School of Iconography, Stafford, VA
EDUCATION
1992
BS, Nursing, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
1990
BA, Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2002–2016
Principal / Owner, Muraca Design, Charlottesville, VA
Residential interior design practice specializing in space planning, color theory, material selection, and decorative arts. Featured in C-VILLE Weekly in 2012 for residential design philosophy, color theory, and antique curation. Curated and operated a specialized online shop sourcing and importing art and antique decorative objects from markets in eastern France and Virginia.
1992–2002
Registered Nurse, University of Virginia Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
AFFILIATIONS
2019–2020
Member, Iconography Guild, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, VA
2015–2016
Needlework Artisan, Needlepoint Kneeler Team, Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, VA