Yolanda Sánchez

The Colour of Spring

Cuban American artist Yolanda Sánchez brings her nature-inspired vision to this springtime exhibition at the Museum of Art – DeLand. Her colorful, flowing textiles created in the traditional Korean Bojagi style are displayed alongside her vibrant, floral inspired paintings.

Nature, in a very broad sense, is Sánchez’s source of inspiration. In a non-intellectual way, she translates and projects thoughts, emotions and sensations into a moment of meeting – working with light, color and mark and the materiality of the paint itself. She holds a space for the viewer – to enter, to be there, to have a moment of contemplation, and to finish the work, as it were. Subject and object are dissolved and replaced by a presence – a “presence without form.” There is no story to be told, just simply a desire to awaken.

Her study and training in calligraphy and background in dance inform her marks in her painted works. Calligraphy, like dance, is an interaction of movement and pause, energy and stillness. Full of motion, like individual dances of line and form, the marks are a universal aesthetic, conveying a life force, independent of meaning or readability.  Rhythm, harmony of opposing forces, sense of space, purity, and mystery, the gestural brushstroke – these qualities make up her process.

Sánchez’s painted work is influenced by poetry, Eastern philosophy and the compositional structures of Chinese and Japanese classical ink painting, generating visual images that integrate drawing, writing and painting. Her interest is not in making art that looks Asian, but in tapping into the energy or power that lies underneath these aesthetics, maintaining nature as the central element and making work that is spiritually infused. Parallel to the work of other American artists such as Franz Kline, Brice Marden and Cy Twombly, she endeavors to tap into the dynamic liveliness of the brushstroke and capture its poetic content, blurring the lines between language and visual representation.

Sánchez’s textiles, painting with fabric, are inspired by the Korean art form known as Bojagi. In its traditional form, the stitching and seams create linear elements that are employed and are viewed as elements of the design, especially with the use of translucent fabrics, and are what distinguishes Bojagi from patchwork textiles found in other traditions. Her Bojagi-inspired textile work honors the tradition, yet extends and interprets the basic structure of Bojagi to a form that is contemporary, varying in medium and size, and utilizing color compositions and stitching techniques less anchored to established methods. In effect, her work is a synthesis of the practices of both painting and textile art.

Born in Cuba and raised in Miami, Sánchez is a product of that “supersyncretic” (Benitez-Rojo) culture, which is the Caribbean. At times not certain of the language she is speaking, she says she improvises and remains open to other influences, like a traveler roaming and crossing borders.

For Sánchez, making art is a way of being present in the world; it is an act of attention. And through this attention, she gives back and offers praise to the world.  As such, her work is celebratory, expanding, opening, and about offering pleasure.

EXHIBITION DETAILS

Yolanda Sánchez: The Colour of Spring

Museum of Art – DeLand, Downtown Gallery

100 N. Woodland Blvd. DeLand, Florida 32720

April 13 – June 30, 2024

Admission: Members Free | Non-Members $5

Top image: Yolanda Sanchez, Water Your Love Every Day (Diptych), 2023, Oil on canvas, 48 x 96 in.