Nicolas V. Sanchez: Charcoal

In Charcoal, Nicolas V. Sanchez worked in grayscale to keep exploring his Mexican-American family history and legacy. Ballet folklorico dancers in sweeping lace skirts and the ornate accessories of traditional dress glow with a pearlescent inner light, and scenes of family life in a Mexican landscape pause with an immediacy that already seems to be slipping away. He had painted many of these subjects before in prismatic watercolor and oil, among them Folklorico de Guerrero (2020), which honors his mother, a seamstress. In the words of Sugarlift's press release, "Sanchez's subjects cast a striking beauty in these spectral charcoals."

The drawings ranged from intimate sheets about ten inches wide to monumental works. Teepee, nearly five feet tall, shows children playing in a teepee in a sunlit park and hung on the navy title wall, while Brown Horse with Veil stretches almost six feet across. Reviewing the show for Whitehot Magazine, the painter and critic Daniel Maidman saw two ways of seeing at work: some drawings, like Mariachi en la Dona, read as memories full of gaps, while others carry the sharp clarity of direct observation.

Sanchez earned his BFA at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and his MFA at the New York Academy of Art, which awarded him its 2014 Post-Graduate Fellowship. He has been selected for residencies in China, the Dominican Republic and Venice, and his work has appeared in VOGUE Italia, Vanity Fair and New York Magazine. He returned to Sugarlift the following year with belongings.