Artist Statement and Article

—BILL DIVEN
It can be difficult to separate student from teacher in the Algodones Elementary School classroom of painter Gary Sanchez.

About 150 kids from age four through grade five pass through the portable every week for art instruction that spills over into other areas. Mixing colors becomes a lesson in fractions; filtering light through a prism creates a rainbow an d a discussion of Sir Isaac Newton.

Based on research showing that children exposed to art and music become better students, it's a curriculum grown from an after-school program four years ago to a regular part of the Bernalillo district's grade schools. Even the teacher learns.
“I try to give them the fundamentals,” the forty-four-year-old Belen native said. “Then they'll do something different, and I'll say, 'Why didn't I think of that?'

“They teach me every day. It's made me a better artist.”

Beyond the lesson plan, teaching allows Sanchez to devote himself full-time to art, a goal set as he walked through a Dallas cultural neighborhood in the early 1990s.

“I saw an artist doing portraits and decided I want to get back,” he said. “I got reinterested in art.”

From his own childhood, Sanchez remembers art as a self-prescribed therapy after death severed the close relationship with his grandfather. His mother supported his talents, enrolling him in art classes; he had his first one-artist show at age seventeen and won an art scholarship.

Art school lasted a semester—he didn't like what they were teaching—so instead he earned degrees in public affairs and urban planning and was deep into a career as planner and budget analyst when he took the fateful stroll in Dallas . Seven years ago he moved back to New Mexico and began taking classes from well-known masters.

Since then his paintings have appeared in galleries and shows and on festival posters and a billboard, won a first place at the New Mexico State Fair, and entered public and private collections.

While he often works in oil and acrylic, many of his images rise in layers, a sketch and underpainting of watercolor with an over-painting of pastels providing detail and depth.

“Working out the underpainting is critical,” Sanchez said. “Sometimes I have a clear idea of what I want to do, and sometimes the painting takes over.

“That's why I try to keep it loose in the beginning.”

Drawing inspiration from the Spanish Baroque painter Diego Velazquez, many Sanchez images are classically New Mexican, from a Pueblo corn maiden to the large-scale landscape Taos Morning, where the Sangre de Cristos rise in the distance while a horse pauses in a pasture. His largest images, a triptych of three adobe churches titled La Iglesia Nuevo Mexicana, currently grace an American Home Furnishings billboard at San Mateo and Lomas, in Albuquerque .

Locally, Sanchez's work can be seen at the Art Exchange Gallery on the Plaza in Santa Fe , and the Indigo Gallery in Madrid . He also shows at the annual Contemporary Hispanic Market in Santa Fe .

A sample of his painting can be seen by visiting www.aegallery.com and clicking on Gary Sanchez.

	"Church in Golden"   -Pastel on Paper 11"x14"
	"Corn Dance "  -Pastel on Paper 27"x17"