“Flooded City 2”
24″ h x 30″ w, acrylic on canvas
It is no secret that I like cityscapes, and at first this looks like a standard New York scene. But then you see the odd shimmer on the ground; the taxis which look slightly sunken below street level. This is a depiction of New York flooded after Hurricane Sandy–a generational (for now) natural disaster which showed with terrible force how Mother Nature still could lay low even the proudest city. The classic image of New York after dark — foreboding, even intimidating — turns into something surprisingly vulnerable when cut by the uncanny waters suffusing the base of the painting.
While Sánchez’s more recent work departs from New York to distinctively ground itself in her Puerto Rican roots, one still sees here the foundation of her flair for architectural painting that takes something archetypically solid–cities and urbanity–and conjoins it with fluidity, even wateriness.
David Schraub 