IB Visual Arts LINCOLN SCHOOL Costa Rica: MELISSA SANCHEZ IB Visual Arts Lincoln School Costa Rics 2015

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

MELISSA SANCHEZ IB Visual Arts Lincoln School Costa Rics 2015

The Artist Statement

by Melissa Sanchez

To me, art has always been a synonym for freedom, a way of merging into the vortex where reality meets fantasy; a place to hide, unexpected.

When I first started IB Art, my concern was denouncing crimes against humanity. This world is full of pain, a part of the human condition, and I felt the need to express the pain I saw within people around me. This led to the topic of my first art pieces, a desire for understanding. This process was quite Conceptualist; my influences varied from Duchamp to Rauschenberg. I felt the need of exploring different media, to find the proper way of developing an idea. During this period, “art” meant communication.

Afterwards, I explored media to find the best for my type of art. I tried linocuts, prints, color graphs, sculptures in modeling paste and ceramic, wire, oils and acrylic paintings.

In July 2014, during a trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I met an old lady named Nina Herlinhy. She collects driftwood and uses it to paint animals, the most common being owls. When I first spoke to her, her first sentence was “I don’t know if this is weird but I think we have been sisters in a past life.”

This was one of the starting points in my inquiry towards Spirituality, the Unconscious, the Collective Unconscious, and the connections and branches there exist among people, through space and time. This is common in Visionary Art, with one of the most influential artists being Alex Gray.

Art right now, means discovering. I have explored a de-railed train of thoughts after meditation, and tried to express awareness. This process has mostly developed through pen and watercolor/color pencil mixed media, which relates to doodling, with free organic lines, line quality, and underlying meanings.

Defining oneself as a certain type of art/movement, is not easy, and I believe is actually impossible. The artist is always in constant destruction and recreation of him or herself. Art is the means to perception.