Artist Sandy Byers owns a vast collection of credit cards, but surprisingly, she doesn’t use any of them to shop. Instead, she uses them as a replacement for paintbrushes, especially when she doesn’t have any handy.
Sandy has always been rather unconventional – she actually quit her cushy job at Microsoft 12 years ago to become a full-time painter. And last year, she took another leap towards the bizarre – she completely abandoned the paintbrush and started using plastic credit cards to paint. Her finished pieces are so beautiful, it’s hard to tell that there were no brushes involved whatsoever.
She developed her unique technique when she visited Marymere Falls in Olympic National Park in 2013. She was about to start painting outdoors after a hiking for about a mile with her husband, when she realised that she’d forgotten her paintbrushes. Going back to the car to get them was simply out of question. “I did not have the heart to ask to go back and get my brushes,” she said. “So I looked around and I just took out my credit card and started painting with it. You gotta find something to paint with when the scene is there and you’ve done the work to get that far.”
