Lourdes Sanchez: You Are Here. And Here, Here, Here, and Here.

New York, NY – Lourdes Sanchez’s fourth solo exhibition at Sears-Peyton Gallery New York “You Are Here. And Here, Here, Here, and Here” features paintings made in the artist’s studio in Mexico this winter. 

Before departing for Mexico, where the artist spends half the year, she visited the Egyptian wing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She explains the influence that visit had on her mindset making work in our current climate. “I wanted to be near the work of artists and artisans from a previous empire. I wondered how they felt about things while they were creating the pieces I was now standing next to, far from their ancestral home. I was hoping they might transmit some answers through the airwaves to the question, "How is an artist to proceed in present world circumstances?”

Taking that question with her, Sanchez traveled to her home on the Yucatán Peninsula, a vital center of the Mayan world. She was deeply appreciative for the opportunity to make this work in proximity to the Mayan people who have shown her so much beauty and kindness. “The steadying force of an ancient in civilization and landscape that have held on for millennia through many cataclysms and continues to live, adapt and bloom again felt like a daily humbling answer to my question at the Met.”

Sanchez’s works have always had the ability to transport the viewer. A pair of large-scale watercolors feature grids of oblong shapes, pulsating from the paper echoing the order and disorder created as the artist layers her paint on the wet surface. These pieces “The planets aligned” and “Moving into alignment” call to mind the celestial; maybe these abstract forms are planets, distant stars, or maybe they are whole universes. Several rare planetary events were taking place while these paintings were being made. Sanchez often works in the evenings to the sounds of cats, night birds and opossums whose nocturnal lives cause the dry winter leaves outside her studio to rustle and crackle, making the lunar and planetary pulls seem very present.

Lourdes Sanchez (b. 1961) is a Cuban-born New York artist whose primary mediums are watercolor and ink, which she uses to explore compositions that are equal parts geometric and organic. She has exhibited her work across in the United States and in Mexico. Her work is included in many esteemed public and private collections and in the museum collection at Zillman Art Museum in Bangor, ME. Her work has been featured in publications including Widewalls, Artsy, and Vogue. She currently lives and works in the City of Newburgh, NY and Merida, Yucatan.

The exhibition is on view May 1st – 31st at Sears-Peyton Gallery in their Chelsea location at 210 Eleventh Avenue. There is an evening reception May 1st from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Exhibitions are open to the public Tuesday-Friday from 11:00 - 5:00pm and Saturdays from 12:00 - 5:00pm. For more information or to request further press images, please contact the gallery at info@searspeyton.com.