Artist Lecture - Diego Sanchez

Diego Sanchez, a close colleague of Mary Scurlock, also presented his work at the Page Bond Gallery on Novemer 17. He explained how his work used to be political, but 10-12 years ago his eyes were opened to architecture, especially the Coliseum. He's been painting the Coliseum for a decade and plans to work with it until he "gets sick of it".

Some of the subject matter was of an every day item, such as a chair or a canoe. He relayed a story in which his friend was throwing out some chairs and asked Sanchez, "I wonder if you could paint these and give them the importance of the Coliseum?" He liked the idea and now has quite a few paintings of chairs with a variety of color palettes and textures.

Of the series at the gallery, I was most drawn to the last which he said he almost didn't include. It included "floaters", which he recently started adding to the final layer of his paintings, such as in the image below:
Sanchez described his work as a "representation of elements"; some of the pieces had a grid form and he mentioned that he uses a lot of sevens in his work. I found that especially interesting, since it is the biblical number of fulfillment and I often find myself doing things in sevens as well. He also said that he will paint over and over on one canvas, sanding away layers and coming back, and that he sees that as "recording history while making artwork", which I found to be an appropriate and succinct description.

His color palettes are very striking and immediately command the viewer's attention, regardless of subject matter. Though I wasn't as interested in the non-architectural paintings, I did appreciate his view of "taking something mundane and looking at it differently."