LUIS SANCHEZ

Luis Sanchez, a renaissance man and extraordinary talent, has emerged in the art world combining both symbolic physical structures, art history and contemporary ecology displayed in trompe l' oeil two-dimensional works. His name not easily forgotten once you have seen this art or met this amazing man.  This Mexican born painter executes his work from the depths and wisdom of one who has lived a fine line between life and death.  The images from his paintings reach the viewer, as he brings canvas to life and dreams to a wise timeless still.  Reinventing the ancient process of fresco, he paints details of degraded stucco walls remembered from his childhood in Mexico City.  He brings the past to the present contemplating about the future and reminding us all the past holds the truth to the future.

Born May 25th 1968, Luis lived the first ten years of his life in Mexico City with his family, a Cuban born father, a Mexican-Lebanese mother an older brother and sister. At age seven after demonstrating an innate talent like his father, his parents enrolled him in Mexico's Prestigious Museo De Bellas Artes, foretelling a future of heritage and destiny. A passionate and diverse family including artisans, dancers and bull fighters surrounded his early life. Luis' family immigrated to the United States in 1979.

Luis attended Cornish College of the arts in Seattle, Washington after graduating from high school in 1987.  Art history, life and perspective drawing were the focal of his studies.  After a lifetime of chronic kidney disease and years of hemodialysis machines, he received a successful kidney transplant in 1993.  Unable to return to his studies, Luis focused on teaching himself the subtleties of human anatomy through books and sketching at times twelve hours a day.  " My transplant was a rebirth, its difficult to explain, but it certainly puts life, everyone in it and everything in crystal clear perspective."

Energy, discipline, drive and a palpable life enforce emanate from him now. Cherishing life, he lives it by design, he is unstoppable. Sanchez is a dedicated, professional, passionate and inspired painter. He enters all that he does from a place of curiosity and a keen intellect to business.  Life fills him and those who are fortunate to associate with him. He balances creation with nature, music and a large community of friends and family.  Impromptu  nature jaunts can always be worked into his busy and demanding schedule. In 1994, Luis established L.S. Design a company producing hand-painted frescoes sold in the gift industry. In the five years in business, L.S. Design became a leading company of fine access designs. He was represented by both West and East coast representatives with over one hundred and twenty stores across urban cities in the US and Canada. His works appeared in various magazine campaigns, Sex in the city, and the motion picture Step Mom.   L.S. design was sold in 2002 before Luis moving to Los Angeles, CA tofocus full-time on his paintings. Today Savage designs continues as a thriving business based in Seattle, WA.

When Luis is not working on business, painting for an exhibition, or working on a commission, you will find him playing with language learning about words, jotting down quotes in his journal, which often appear, ghost like in his paintings deepening the human story.  He is also very active in charity.  Luis has donated many works and raised thousands of dollars for Rise and Shine Foundation (children with Aids), DIFFA, design industries fighting for Aids, Bellevue art Museum Auctions and donated to local High School art programs.  He also works as a camp counselor and facilitator for Power of Hope, an organization working with troubled teens.

Artspeak, NY March 1997, stated Luis paints in the "unflinching tradition of Frieda Kahlo". The Agora gallery, NY feels he "occupies the same eerie, unstable space as a story by Poe or a movement by Mahler".  In conversation and on canvas, you see, feel and palpate a past and future memory, for this renaissance man is truly an old soul.  Symbolism, the living human spirit and mirror of truth come alive.  The psyche stirs and the viewer somehow changed, touched, inextricably.  Luis Sanchez the man, the painter, a spirit to watch, for at 37 years old he is a great talented man.


- Kate Thompson

Born: Mexico City, 1968

Education: 

Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA
Academy of Realist art, Seattle, WA

Selected Exhibitions: