The art show for Dee Sanchez opened Friday, November 6th to a standing room only crowd at Sumner & Dene Creations in Art. The gallery buzzed with positive energy as many locals came to meet Sanchez in person and to admire her work. As a special treat, Mezcla Latina provided the background music that welcomed visitors as they entered the gallery.
Sanchez lives and works in the village of Alameda, New Mexico. After raising a family, she taught herself how to paint and launched her career in 2002. Sanchez is best known as an intuitive colorist and who paints with a palette knife in the alla prima style, completing each of her paintings in one sitting. Her subjects include grand vistas, cloudscapes and skyscapes, huge, chaotic masses of native wildflowers, and the small villages and people of her state. Sanchez likes to challenge herself to paint one painting EVERY day. In pre-paration for this show alone she painted sixty paintings, sharing her progress on her daily blog with followers all over the country.
As she likes to say, “I was taught by my grandmothers from a very young age to appreciate nature and the environment. I grew up in the country next to a creek and spent my childhood exploring my own little corner of the world. The place to find me was out among the iris and poppy beds - taking flowers and stems apart to see how they grew. Gathering masses of flowers for the dinner table. Picking pecans fallen from the trees. Planting vegetables with my grandpa and his old vintage wheeled plow. I make marks because I want viewers to love the land as I do. To love the serenity of a still life. To appreciate the figure as beautiful. Come along with me and see what I see.”
Sanchez is also the only juried member from New Mexico of dailypainters.com, one of the largest daily painting websites in the world. She has been the poster artist for Weems International Artfest, and created the poster for the 2012 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Sanchez has done ad campaigns for the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe, painted the Jemez Christmas tree for our nation's capitol building, and regularly donates artwork to numerous charitable foundations, and many corporate and private collectors.
The Painting the North: Taos and Beyond exhibition will hang through November 28th at Sumner & Dene Creations in Art, 517 Central Avenue, NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102, (505) 842-1400, www.sumnerdene.com
