Luis Sanchez Biography

Luis Sanchez is a artist who is not limited to any one genre, rather, he is a master at many. A true Renaissance Man, he excels at figurative and abstract painting, found object mixed-media work, delicate shadowboxes, bronze figurative sculpture, jewelry, and has even designed a line of artful clocks.

Born in 1968, Luis lived the first ten years of his life in Mexico City with his family (a Cuban born father who was also a fine artist, a Mexican-Lebanese mother, and an older brother and sister.) It seems art was always his destiny, as his mother had very strong dreams and visions of him as a sculptor during her pregnancy, and in fact wanted to name him Michelangelo. Thankfully, his father intervened, but her premonition was in fact, accurate.

Although as a child, Luis spent countless hours watching his father paint, sculpture was his first passion. He began sculpting at age five, using a material called Roma Plastilina. By the time he was seven, he had demonstrated an innate talent like his father's, so he was enrolled in Mexico's Prestigious Museo De Bellas Artes. This early education, combined with the tutelage of his father, gave the young man a solid foundation, and his future course was set.

Luis is best known for his realistic paintings of stunningly beautiful people (his friends) set in somewhat surreal circumstances, painted on his signature highly-textured canvases that resemble degraded stucco. This recreation of the walls he remembers from his childhood in Mexico City gives his work a most unusual quality – melding the ancient past with present day fashionable participants, and a question about what the future holds in the mysterious scenes he paints. His usually large works are mesmerizing examples of trompe l'oeil, leaving viewers with the impression that he has used photography, collage, or other techniques, when he has only dexterously used the brush.

The Sanchez family immigrated to the United States in 1979, and after graduating from high school in 1987, Luis attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. But after a lifetime of chronic kidney disease and years of dialysis, Luis was forced to drop out of school to receive a kidney transplant in 1993.  Unable to return to school, Luis focused on refining his drawing techniques, and began painting from his bed. He learned the subtleties of human anatomy through books, sometimes sketching for up to twelve hours a day.  "My transplant was a rebirth. It is difficult to explain, but it certainly put life, everyone in it, and everything, in crystal clear perspective." His work emanates the energy, discipline, and drive  of someone who has gotten a second chance, and now lives life to the fullest.

The first major exhibit of his paintings in 1993 resulted in 3 consecutive sold out shows. Since that time, he has exhibited almost continuously, with shows in Seattle, New York, Florida, Indianapolis, London, and throughout Los Angeles, where he now resides.

Recently, his mother's intuition ignited a major career shift. A seemingly random comment, "You should stop painting and focus on sculpture," struck a nerve in the artist, who had been contemplating this change himself. Instinctually knowing it to be the correct move, he embarked upon a new journey, and has since created a completely original body of complex figurative work in bronze. "The New Alchemy" is a series that is inspired in part by the Industrial Revolution, and in part highlights the powerful machine of mankind itself. A private viewing of the first four resulted very successful, with the public premiere eagerly anticipated at Art Basel, Miami. Like a true alchemist, we can only imagine a golden future for this major talent.