As a child, a freak accident left Ed Sandoval in a body cast for a year. To entertain himself during the long days, he turned to art. Today, Sandoval, who was born in Nambé, maintains a connection to this childhood imagination, in part due to his lasting respect for the New Mexico of his boyhood. A painter working in “romantic expressionism,” Sandoval draws, as he puts it, “divine inspiration in creating the old life of New Mexico,” and frequently includes adobe homes, workhorses, dirt roads, and pickup trucks in his compositions. In most of his work, Sandoval’s devotion to the “rule of three” is apparent; architecture, people, and the land are wholly united. Sandoval’s signatures, however, are the inclusion of “El Viejito” (the little old man) and the stripe of crimson lining the mountainous horizons in almost all of his images. Sandoval currently works from a studio on the Couse-Sharp Historic Site campus.

edsandovalgallery.com