7 News Belize

Windows to Melody Sanchez Wolfe's Soul
posted (February 9, 2010)

Melody Sanchez Wolfe is a San Pedro based Belizean Artist – who at the age of 23 has been successful at selling her work. That’s not bad considering she started painting professionally four years ago. She’s mounted a show at the Bliss Center and Jacqueline Godwin found that her island-inspired works reveal more than meet they eye.

Melody Sanchez Wolfe, Artist
“So I guess somebody walked in and said this doesn’t look like one artist, this looks like five different artists and I go, that’s me.”

And that’s because the artist, twenty five year old Melody Sanchez Wolfe has no specific theme when she paints, something she only started doing professionally for the last couple of years. Indeed as the water colour pieces display the works are varied but that’s because melody has the unique style of capturing her emotions on canvass that sets the mood of each painting.

Melody Sanchez Wolfe,
“I like to just pick like three or four colours and just mix them and just go with it and just whatever comes out, comes out – just lines and kind of like abstract more patterns. Sometimes I get, I don’t know if this explains it but I am a Gemini and my mood changes a lot. So sometimes I just want to paint realism and sometimes I want to just paint whatever I want to paint.”

But clearly in this exhibition the focus are on the eyes, the windows to the soul and that just happens to be the title of the artist second solo show in Belize City. Melody says her fascination with eyes started from her own admiration with one painting, the eyes of Freida Cahalo, the great female Mexican artist.

Melody Sanchez Wolfe,
“She is a Mexican artist that had a uni-brow and she painted in Mexico and she was married to Diego Rivera who was a revolutionary and she is just a strong woman.

And then my friend Jose Luis Zapata took a picture of a young lady named Michelle Nunez and he took a picture, it kind of looked like the National Geographic, you know the famous one that was on National Geographic and I painted that and I liked the way it turned out and then I loved the jaguar and so I painted his eyes and made them bright green and I just believe that the eyes are like, you always hear they are the window to the souls, and you see people and see if they are happy or mad or envious. You can tell all that through their eyes but also when they look at a painting you can see if they like it or not, some people will frown but another person will come by and they will have a good expression on their face and so you’ll know they like it.”

Melody’s inspiration to paint started from when she was just a child. Now in her mid twenties the skill of this young artist has already captured the eyes of many art lovers especially from her birth place in San Pedro Ambergris Caye.

Jacqueline Godwin,
“The pieces that are on display, they were done over what period of time?”

Melody Sanchez Wolfe,
“I have at least two that are from last year, from my first art exhibit in San Pedro, and then some of them I was planning on doing an exhibit from Windows to the Soul which was going to be a collection of just eyes and then Miss Karen from the Bliss called me and invited me to come and so I decided I would just launch the seven pieces I had which turned into nine because she saw couple and said this looked like Windows to the Soul too and so she added them to the collection of Windows to the Soul.”

From just one show in 2009 melody managed to sell fifty percent of her paintings that were on display. The main sellers have been pieces like this one titled a pattern of fish.

Melody Sanchez Wolfe,
“That’s one of them and then anything commercial like beach scenes and stuff. So I do some of those to keep me afloat. Last year I had an art exhibit and I did well, I sold about half of the paintings and so I am hoping that with this one I won’t have to take any back to San Pedro either.”

Windows of the Soul will run until the end of February. Jacqueline Godwin for 7News.

The exhibit’s opening started a short while ago at the Bliss.

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