WELCOME TO ARTISTS, COLLECTORS, AND ANYONE WHO LOVES ART!
Artist Spotlight focuses on interesting artists, upcoming exhibitions, and articles about art and those who love it or create it.
Discover new ways to stretch your imagination, be introduced to new artists, their exhibits, and books to read about them. Expect to excite your mind. Comments are very welcome! -- Rosemary Carstens
Now calling Wimberley, Texas, his home, Latino artist ALFREDO SANCHEZ creates vibrant works of art by drawing from a rich well of memory and cultural history. Growing up in San Miguel de Allende, a renowned art colony a few hours by bus north of Mexico City, it was not unusual for him to see artists working in the town’s main plaza, painting the colorful colonial district, the street scenes, all the traditional activities of the community. Alfredo loved watching them work and spent many quiet hours drawing in the courtyard of his home. At age seven, he learned to paint in classes taught at the library by San Miguel’s artists.
As Alfredo says today, “My paintings express memories, images and patterns from this place where church spires touch the sky and magical occurrences are daily events.” He loves to paint “beauty in the abstract,” simplifying forms, using geometric shapes to capture the essence and gestural qualities of a subject. He looks for patterns in the shapes and sees forms in the shadows. “As I work, I play with color. I see a multitude of colors in the natural world but rarely do I see a solid color. There's a freedom in choosing which colors to intensify, to alter, and which to imbue with emotion. I like to paint in layers of color, where sometimes jarring tones lie side by side, but are tamed slightly when the eye blends them.”
Sanchez paints everything around him, from stunning abstracts to landscapes and portraits. His small abstracts and a series of prints reflect scenes from his childhood—recollections of summer afternoons spent in his grandfather’s garden, playing amidst fruit-laden trees and masses of flowers, the hum of bees often on the air; stately town processions on holy days; the main church’s spire against a cerulean sky. More recently he has begun a series of mixed-media collages, such as the one pictured here, combining acrylics, a bold palette, and scraps of silk and batik to create compelling images drawn from the natural world. He is married to American textile artist SUSAN CRANSHAW and the two of them find their individual work enriched by their dual culture and history. Alfredo’s canvases carry a subtle narrative beneath their skillful rendering—stories, not only of his past but of his present. Stories that lend themselves to interpretation, that engage and intrigue us as we make them our own.
To see more of Alfredo Sanchez’s work and learn more about his unique paintings:
http://www.alfredojsanchez.com/Gallery on the Square, Wimberley, TX – (512) 847-9904
http://www.galleryonthesquare.com/
--Rosemary Carstens
September and October present an amazing opportunity to add contemporary Latin American art works to your collection. Each fall, the Latin American Art Museum (MOLAA) in Long Beach, CA, holds its premiere auction event, consisting this year of an exhibition of 240 works of art, all generously donated by artists and collectors to support the museum’s programs and to allow public access to art otherwise difficult to acquire. All pieces will be on view in the Main, Long, and Lexus exhibition galleries from September 20-October 17, and can also be previewed on the museum’s website at http://www.molaa.org. They will be auctioned during the silent and live auctions held on the weekend of October 18 and 19.
This is also the season for the annual MOLAA awards, an invitational juried art competition that invites mid-career artists from Latin America to share their work with the museum’s audience. The competition recognizes the achievement and merit of five artists and the winners will be announced on Saturday, October 18. Award-winning pieces will become part of the MOLAA Permanent Collection.
For fans of the amazing art coming out of a full range of Latin American countries, plus work created by Latino/a artists in North American, this is a fabulous chance to see your favorites firsthand. For those unfamiliar with this segment of the art world, prepare to fall in love! For all, it is a chance to include unique and imaginative work to your collection!
--Rosemary Carstens
June 15–August 31, 2008
Born in Cuba in 1902, dying in Paris in 1982, Afro-Chinese Cuban artist WILFREDO LAM is well known throughout Latin America for his innovative work. A master among the mid-20th-century modern artists, he drew from both Picasso’s cubism and Andre Breton’s surrealism, yet gave these styles a unique twist of his own. As it says on the MOLAA website, “His visual language is a synthesis of Cubism, Surrealism, primitivism, . . . Afro-Cuban history and ethnicity, and the religious practice of Santería.” It is as striking today as it was in his lifetime. Sixty-five of his most important paintings, gouaches, and drawings from a traveling exhibition curated by Curtis Carter will be on view.
During the same period, an exhibit featuring the work of CARLOS LUNA is at MOLAA. Another Cuban artist, he is known for his iterations of Manichean duality. He was born in 1961 in Cuba and became a part of the 1980s artistic rebellion. He relocated to Puebla, Mexico, in 1991, and his years there added a Mexican muralism narrative to his Cuban-Havana School heritage.
Luna's exhibition in MOLAA’s Focus Gallery presents a selection of seventeen paintings recently created by the artist. The central masterpiece is Luna’s work titled, El Gran Mambo. Essayist Enrique Garcia Gutierrez states, “his ‘gran mambo,’ his grand theater, could not exist without the tragedy and pain of the political exile, which is the blood that gives life to this masterpiece.”
The work of these two fine Cuban artists should not be missed. It will crack open your mind and introduce you to dynamic new ways of thinking about color, juxtaposition, cultural expression, and the use of rhythm in visual art.
— Rosemary Carstens
Now calling Wimberley, Texas, his home, Latino artist ALFREDO SANCHEZ creates vibrant works of art by drawing from a rich well of memory and cultural history. Growing up in San Miguel de Allende, a renowned art colony a few hours by bus north of Mexico City, it was not unusual for him to see artists working in the town’s main plaza, painting the colorful colonial district, the street scenes, all the traditional activities of the community. Alfredo loved watching them work and spent many quiet hours drawing in the courtyard of his home. At age seven, he learned to paint in classes taught at the library by San Miguel’s artists.
Sanchez paints everything around him, from stunning abstracts to landscapes and portraits. His small abstracts and a series of prints reflect scenes from his childhood—recollections of summer afternoons spent in his grandfather’s garden, playing amidst fruit-laden trees and masses of flowers, the hum of bees often on the air; stately town processions on holy days; the main church’s spire against a cerulean sky. More recently he has begun a series of mixed-media collages, such as the one pictured here, combining acrylics, a bold palette, and scraps of silk and batik to create compelling images drawn from the natural world. He is married to American textile artist SUSAN CRANSHAW and the two of them find their individual work enriched by their dual culture and history. Alfredo’s canvases carry a subtle narrative beneath their skillful rendering—stories, not only of his past but of his present. Stories that lend themselves to interpretation, that engage and intrigue us as we make them our own.
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