Breast cancer diagnosis opens new art career for Santa Rosa woman
Claudia Sanchez was diagnosed with breast cancer more than a decade ago, but it could have been yesterday. The memory is still indelible; she heard the news she had Grade 1 invasive ductal cell carcinoma on her 20th wedding anniversary, in 2005.
“I was in disbelief,” said Sanchez, who was 52 at the time. A Santa Rosa artist and mother of two grown children, Sanchez put up a tough battle against the disease, but found comfort in a pair of gentle creatures - her two pedigree cats, Simba and Sabrina.
When she was feeling weak and ill from radiation and chemotherapy treatments, she had her constant companions sharing their affections and helping her through the toughest days, “as if they knew” something wasn’t quite right.
“These two cats saw me through it,” said Sanchez, now 64. “They would lie there with me on the sofa. We call it ‘kitty therapy.’?”
The cats, and others she’d later adopt, not only provided unconditional love, they inspired her artwork and led Sanchez to establish Cats for a Cure, a collection of cat art products that raise funds for breast cancer research and services.
A self-taught digital and multimedia artist, Sanchez started out painting abstracts but added cats to her pursuits after a gift shop and gallery owner suggested she “do something else” to broaden her appeal. Sanchez showed the owner her lone cat painting - a work completed for her cat-loving mother for Mother’s Day - and a new path emerged.
“From that moment, I never turned back,” she said. Today her works almost exclusively feature cats, but not just tuxedo kitties in black and white or gray-toned tabbies. Her cats are painted in brilliant rainbow hues - purple, pink, green, yellow, orange and blue - vibrant and eye-catching.
Sanchez calls her style “abstract realism.” It’s something she developed in mid-life, after switching from a business career, holding jobs including bookkeeping and data entry, and serving as an office manager for Caltrans.
She left that profession in her early 30s to pursue a certificate in interior design from Santa Rosa Junior College. She particularly enjoyed courses in color principles, and today is known for her creative use of color.
“I try to keep the cats realistic in terms of markings and eyes, and then play with the color,” she said. “Color is my No. 1 thing, and my cats have golden whiskers.”
Her works are cheerful, with cats in varied poses and settings. Although she favors Wine Country and Hawaiian themes, (felines in vineyards and peering into wine glasses and kitties surfing, scuba diving and wearing hula skirts and sunglasses), Sanchez poses cats in iconic settings in San Francisco Victorians and cable cars and at the Golden Gate Bridge.
Other works are closeups of cat faces - with those signature golden whiskers - while some highlight cats cozying up in coffee mugs or hammocks or perched on piano keys.
Most of Sanchez’s paintings focus on a single cat, but one piece features 22 cats in and atop a cable car. She loves painting cityscapes, finding new ways to place cats within architectural settings.
With each work, she tries to establish an emotional connection between cats and viewers.
Despite the pose or setting, “To me it’s (the cats’) eyes and the color,” she said. “What gets me through is the fact people love my art.”
Sanchez doesn’t discriminate against other animals. She’s painted dogs, cows, a bobcat and bunnies, also a dragonfly, and in her “House of All Creatures” poster, there’s a bird and a kangaroo, too.
She considers her work rewarding and therapeutic. “I feel successful. I feel in my own way I’ve done a lot,” she said. Her work has been featured in shops, galleries, art shows, exhibitions and private collections for more than 20 years.
She’s had to modify her approach since her battle with breast cancer.
She’s “less prolific” and has reduced the number of cat, wine and art shows she attends to sell her work.
Although Sanchez initially painted in watercolors and acrylics on paper and canvas, her carpal tunnel symptoms in both hands increased after taking cancer-fighting drugs. She now paints digitally in Photoshop on her computer, hand-embellishing her originals with colored ink and occasionally adding crystals, wires or fabric bits.
Her works are sold in prints and posters; as wearable art on T-shirts, tote bags and jewelry; on metal and hardboard prints; on luggage tags, holiday ornaments, magnets, mugs, compact mirrors and coasters; plush cats wearing Sanchez art T-shirts; and as etched Plexiglas cats.
She has licensing agreements for her cats on ceramic tiles, wooden figurines and T-shirts. Sanchez has incorporated her artwork to make political statements, like her “Resist-Purrsist” line.
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