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Armando Lopez is a Tarascan native born in the small village of Santa Maria, Michoacan in S.W.
Mexico. His grandfather was known in Santa Maria and the
surrounding villages as a master basket weaver and talented all-around
craftsmen. Lopez’s sculptural work grew
out of the folk art tradition of fashioning figures out of corn husks, twigs,
reeds, and grass. He draws upon both
native and Catholic imagery in his mixed media work and his paintings.
For Lopez, each painting begins with a little magic. Not with a photograph, an idea, or a
preconceived sketch, but with a vision.
The visions always come to him first thing in the morning. He goes to breakfast table, drinks tea, and
begins to draw. Sometimes he gets so
excited that he moves immediately to canvas.
At the canvas, he begins with gesso, draws directly on the
canvas with a pencil, and then covers the whole surface with brown sienna,
allowing the drawing to show through. He
applies the white, then dark brown sienna, and finally, layers of color. He thinks of the painting process as
sculptural, building up an image with paint.
Lopez works in egg tempera and oils.
With the former, he mixes his own colors using the old technique of egg
yolk and water.
Each work is a joy and an experiment. It is always fun. Speaking to Lopez, this is not hard to
believe. Everything he says and does
seems to come from wonderful childlike joy, a wizened sense of gratitude, and a
quiet sense of the magical that lurks just beneath the mundane. The figures in a painting speak to him, guide
him. The hardest part, he says, is
knowing when a painting is finished. He
looks at it outside, in the sunlight.
When he can see the figures breathe, he knows he is finished.
Lopez grew up believing he would be a painter. His first grade teacher told him, “One day
you are going to be a famous painter.”
When he was ten years old, he went to a hospital for children, to visit
a sick cousin. There he saw a life-scale
wildlife mural. He went home very
excited, and painted the walls with giraffes, deer, and all manner of benign
creatures. He left the door open for all
the town to see and the townsfolk responded very positively to his fist
exhibition. His mother was very
encouraging of his talents. He made
seasonal toys from organic materials from the harvest. His grandfather was a strong early
influence. “He can make anything,” Lopez
says.
Lopez moved to Morelia
for middle school. He began art school,
painting on canvas with oils. The
materials were prohibitively expensive, so he transferred to acting school,
which “saved my life,” he says. He was
exposed to the larger art world: music, drama, literature, and film.
Exposure to a larger world soon led to exploration. He came the United States and was thrilled to
discover, in the art supplies section at a California Standard Brands store,
that art supplies were affordable. He
learned English quickly and kept painting.
A friendship brought him to Abiquiu,
New Mexico, where he has lived on
an organic farm for twelve years.
He sculpts with natural materials from the farm, drawing on
what he learned from his grandfather and on the puppet-making that fascinated
him in art school. He began to sell his
sculpture even before he sold paintings.
His first solo show in Taos
was a grand success, and success has followed him ever since. His magical, masterfully crafted paintings
and his mythic, whimsical sculptures appeal to seasoned collectors and novices
alike. His work has been featured in
exhibitions across the Americas. In 2006, his paintings were featured in the
prestigious juried Coconut Grove,
Florida annual Festival of the
Arts.
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July 9, 2008 
