Carla Sanchez - When Did this Happen? - Summer 2008 Issue of Horses in Art Magazine

Carla Sanchez - When Did this Happen?

by Shirley Ramsey

Silk Stocking – Pen & Ink, 30 x 24, by Carla Sanchez.
Carla Sanchez was raised as an Air Force brat. Born in the Philippines, moving frequently, she now resides in Georgia. When asked who inspired her, she says it was her artist grandfather who passed away before she was born. All her life she has tried to imagine who he was through the artworks he left behind.

Carla always loved art but lived in the shadow of her sister (and best friend) who received a full scholarship to the Cleveland Institute of Art. Carla was told she didn’t have the talent to be an artist. Embarrassed and dismayed, she became a closet artist. She hoarded her extra money for art supplies and hid all her efforts in the closet and under her bed. When she had her first show in 2005, she surprised her father when taking him to the gallery. He asked her, “When did all this happen?”

Much other inspiration comes from the first horse she bought the summer before she started college, in East Hampton, New York. Silk Stocking was a Morgan she showed in Special Hunters. He was a difficult horse for others to ride and was on his way to the killers. He was that one special horse that sometimes a person is lucky enough to have in their lifetime. Many kids at her riding stable have won their first blue ribbon on him and he also taught her husband and children to ride. He lived to the ripe old age of 36. Many of Carla’s artworks are of Silky.

Jumper – Watercolor, 11 x 14, by Carla Sanchez.

Carla met a local art teacher, Nikki Davidson, in Georgia, who “brought her out of the closet.” Carla saw one of her art pieces, which was “anatomically perfect.” Of course it was of a horse! She signed up for an art class with Nikki “Drawing on the Right Side of your Brain – Tapping into your Innate Ability.” As she progressed through her art classes, a floodgate opened, and she has not stopped since. She had her first gallery show in 2005. Recently Carla has been painting with David Leffel, considered in the art world to be one of the few living modern masters.

Carla does some watercolor, but mostly, graphite and oil. She likes to do old-world, fantasy-type scenes; taking horses and putting them back in time where she feels they are brought out to their fullest beauty. For example, she painted a gypsy drum horse with the gypsies and a cremello ladies horse at a fair carrying a basket of flowers. She put her favorite horse Silky in the Royal Vienna Riding School where she feels he always wanted to be and her Trakener mare running on the Mongolian plains. However, she likes to be realistic in her drawing technique. Carla would really like to do portraits for people who have lost their horses and want to remember them always through art. You can email Carla Sanchez at: windweb@earthlink.net.

In Memory of Silk Stocking – Graphite, 14 x 16, by Carla Sanchez

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