Laura Sanchez displays variety of paintings in one woman show
La Vida
From an owl that frightened off the pigeons to unseen cranes to intricate Russian temples, Laura Sanchez’s paintings capture a myriad of subjects, many with a personal, family story.
Like the oil painting of the triumphant launch of a hand-made boat, with a walnut frame made by her brother, or the large piece featuring her grandmother and five sisters, each with their own story that Sanchez recounts.
Her one-woman show, “Faces, Places and Unsolved Cases,” on display at the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage and Arts through next month, also features watercolors of modern Los Lunas, and oil interpretations of just what “Mohammed’s Radio” from the Linda Ronstadt cover might have looked like.
Julia M. Dendinger | News-Bulletin photos
The one-woman show for local artist Laura Sanchez features both oil and watercolors by her, including “The Hudson Sisters,” which is based on a family photo of her grandmother and her sisters. Sanchez won Best of Show in the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage’s juried art show last fall, which resulted in her spring show.
Last fall, her portrait “Dances Past, Dances Future?” won Best of Show in the museum’s juried art show, an honor that comes with a one-person show in the spring.
Nearly 40 of Sanchez’ oil and watercolor paintings are on display at the museum, for the show, many of which she never thought about publicly displaying.
“I never really thought about showing a lot of it. I was just doing them for myself,” Sanchez said. “I pulled things out from under the bed and the back of the garage.”
A bit of a self-portrait, this oil painting shows artist Laura Sanchez and a friend out “plinking at cans.”
The Los Los Lunas water – seen from Laura Sanchez’ kitchen window – as an old-school monster movie poster.
With a bachelor of arts degree in studio art from the University of New Mexico and about 95 percent of a master’s degree in art history and criticism, Sanchez has been drawing and painting since she was a child, but says it wasn’t an “overwhelming urge.”
When she was young, she remembers her father asking what she wanted to do as an adult. After some thought, Sanchez said she’d like to be an artist.
“He said ‘Well you better learn to paint signs,’ and sure enough, we spent four or five years painting signs in the 1970s,” Sanchez said, laughing at the memory of the business venture she and her husband, Alex, had shortly after moving to Los Lunas in 1968.
One of Laura Sanchez’ careers included bell dancing instructor, which led her to create “Red, White and Blue.”
Growing up in northern Mississippi, Sanchez said the public school system didn’t have any kind of art instruction, so she would “mess around with it.” She was introduced to New Mexico after her brother moved to the Land of Enchantment to work for Sandia National Labs.
“I would visit him, spend the summer. It fit a lot better than Mississippi,” she said. “I was not successful at being a well-behaved young woman.”
She met Alex when they were both in art school at UNM and on their honeymoon trip driving from Mississippi, across Arkansas and Texas, then taking that left turn at Albuquerque, they discovered the village of Los Lunas.
As a teacher, Alex had job offers pending in both Bernalillo and Los Lunas, and the Los Lunas offer came through first. He eventually went to the University of New Mexico-Valencia campus, where he established and led the campus’s computer-aided drafting program until his retirement.
Sanchez started her own residential design business that specialized in traditional and contemporary adobe homes, created renderings for Su Casa Magazine, wrote for the now defunct Weekly Alibi, dabbled in fashion illustration and belly dancing.
Defying gravity, a dancer’s colorful veil rises into the air in “Veil Dance.” The image is from a birds-eye-view perspective.
“I just did this for a while, then did that,” she said.
She and Alex authored “Adobe Houses for Today,” a book featuring plans for adobe houses that are easily attainable for most everyone, as well as works of fiction, such as “Freaking Green” and “Killer Miracle,” both of which feature her original cover art. “Killer Miracle” was a finalist for the 2014 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award in the Mystery/Suspense category.
Saying writing is “enormous fun” Sanchez is a more prolific painter than author, who likes a challenge.
“Watercolors are a challenge. Oil is opaque. If you make a mistake, you just paint over it,” she said. “You can’t really do that with watercolor. It’s transparent, so you have to start with the light colors and then build up to the dark colors.”
Many of her pieces will be recognizable to locals, such as “Bat Gates,” which is two irrigation gates that used to be situated on a ditch off of N.M. 314, north of Los Lunas on the Pueblo of Isleta.
“They just look like two bats, rising out of the ditch,” she says.
“Bat Gates” rising out of an irrigation ditch.
“I Can Hear the Cranes” captures the all-too-common scenario of hearing flocks of migrating sandhill cranes but never laying eyes on them.
Photos of recent New Mexico wildfires have served as inspiration for some of her work, as well as the village she calls home. The watercolor, “Chaintown,” portrays the colorful, crowded west side of Los Lunas where Main Street crosses Interstate 25.
Boats moored on Grandville Island in Vancouver, BC, a trio of paintings — “When I Lived in the Magic House” — of the Huning House captures the years she and Alex lived in the historic building, and “I Can Hear the Cranes” portrays a bucolic field backed by fall-colored cottonwoods. The viewer can hear the echo of the hidden sandhill cranes in the painting, while looking in vain for the long-legged birds.
“You know, I don’t think of myself as an artist. More of an illustrator, because I’ve never had that drive that I’ve got to paint my vision of the world to see,” Sanchez said. “I try to paint anything that intrigues me. I guess it’s a way of looking at stuff really closely, and that sense of wanting to really look at things, the best way to do that is to draw it. It’s just more interesting to try something different.”
A vision of a shining city in the west, “Chaintown” portrays the west side of the village of Los Lunas.
Laura Sanchez’ one-person exhibit, “Faces, Places and Unsolved Cases,” will be up at the Los Lunas Museum of Heritage and Arts until Saturday, July 22.
The museum, 251 Main St. NE, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday through Tuesday.
Julia M. Dendinger began working at the VCNB in 2006. She covers Valencia County government, Belen Consolidated Schools and the village of Bosque Farms. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists Rio Grande chapter’s board of directors.
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April 25, 2024
