Meet Leticia Sánchez | Visual Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Leticia Sánchez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Leticia, as a parent, what have you done for you children that you feel has had the most significant impact?
Trying to set the best possible example. That was my experience. So I work everyday on the blank canvas that is my child. It is my most important work, the most endearing. That’s why I try to be better myself every morning, as a person, as a friend, as an artist and as a mother. So that the result is passed on to my son and that he will eventually be a full person who contributes and enriches the world to the best of his ability.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
My painting is very self-referential, intimate, it is a process of self-design, I build myself with full awareness. I incorporate cultural notions into my own life through art. My work explores relationships, the spontaneous interaction that is established between the circumstances and the space, whether physical or symbolic, that dwells within us and the subject who experiences them, who may or may not be present in the work and in which I often see myself represented. It is in this superposition of spaces where my work develops. At times the space is stimulating, benign and then acquires prominence and that beauty is reflected in the quiet hedonism of the characters who inhabit it. Or the opposite: if the space is hostile, it can also be reflected in the subject, in the opposite way.

I speak more of the human condition than of the photographic image. I express, or try to express, feelings through very specific forms of observation and representation.
Each work is a sort of “emotional selection” through the dialogue between the cinematographic and the pictorial, as a pretext to understand, sediment or purge intimate processes, almost always introspective, and also rehearse processes that concern the purely intellectual, morphological and stylistic. There are still a lot of questions I have to ask myself. I write my personal diary, the story of my life and my experiences through painting. It is just another form of self-knowledge.

They have characterized my painting, in visual terms, by their play of light and shadow. Color and light are important elements that evoke the aura or atmosphere of a given circumstance. I try to capture another game, this time of ideas or questions. And I am not interested in corroborating or answering them. Questions also float like dust particles in the beams of light. They can be considered clues, hints, faint suspicions, rather suspicions, which would leave a suspenseful story at the end.

And of course it is a kind of work that will reach some people more than others. In the same way that I often paint empty spaces, just abandoned, where the trace of the person who inhabits it still persists. That space and also the characters are mirrors, whose reflection enriches and complements us. Art usually gives us those essential pauses to listen to ourselves, to feel ourselves, to notice the rumors of the soul.

Bearing in mind that my mother and my brother precede me as artists, I ask myself: what distinguishes me, who I am and how? I can imagine it. But it is something I do not take for granted. Even our image reflected in a mirror is something absolutely different.

I am not interested, like them, in the large-scale landscape. Like tremendous surfaces that are a bit too wide for the people who might eventually ‘inhabit’ them. I don’t want to get into formal comparisons. Only with intention. My landscapes almost always emerge in small formats. Immense spaces scare me and my awareness of limits, controllable spaces or my obsession for control is clearly visible.

The interiors then you can see them as a protective grotto, as a metaphor of the maternal womb, the primary home, where dreams and memories survive and where we feel safe to imagine and create. Outside you can clearly hear the hostility of men and their selfish universes.

I feel a kind of nonconformity. I don’t want to be just one woman, but a good number of them. Because in that way I can explore through art different contexts and aptitudes. That’s why my work has a strong ontological character, where I need to make constant explorations about my identity and for that I multiply myself in an infinity of characters, situations and spaces, where I somehow habituate.

Art is a process of finding my own voice, of trial and error, sometimes very frustrating. It involves pain and pleasure. I don’t always start a painting in the same
I try to find my own way. I like to develop various possibilities for painting, I notice that over time painting renews and changes, and I feel that it is the constant challenge of being uncomfortable in front of a work that keeps alive the need and appetite for creation.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
BO BK, Yoga and Pilates studio plus a coffee shop. It’s a great place. Perez Museum
Space 23
Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park
Vizcaya Village
Every place with grass, fresh air, trees… you can imagine.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My mother has been an important pillar in my development and growth, not only as a mother but also as an artist. She deserves my admiration and gratitude for the dedication, patience and love she has given me throughout my life.

Instagram: leticiavisualartist

Facebook: Leticia Sanchez Toledo

Youtube: Leticia Sanchez Toledo

Other: www.panamericanart.com

Image Credits
Leticia Sanchez Toledo