For Bernard Sandoval, the love of art is a long and winding story.
“Like many artists, my journey started as a kid,” he says. “My dad would draw cartoons and sketch, and when you are a kid who sees that regularly, it's just normal.”
Sandoval grew up on 14 acres at the outskirts of Raton, New Mexico, surrounded by horses and cows. His surroundings like Raton, Santa Fe and Taos were saturated in color and culture. Mimicking his father’s sketching, and incorporating his immediate community, he found himself drawing horses in all different colors.
Humble Beginnings
In third grade, one of Sandoval’s Catholic school teachers invited him to stay in from recess, allowing him the entire chalkboard as his own personal canvas. It was an offer he could not refuse and proved the catalyst in pursuing his passion. In ninth grade, one of his professors asked if he had taken private art classes, and because he hadn’t, he ran with the compliment.
As high school was ending, he considered joining the military when a counselor encouraged him to look into art school scholarships. He attended Eastern New Mexico University and majored in design and commercial art. The “starving artist” reputation kept him from majoring in fine art, but his electives were filled with art courses.
He took figure drawing and noticed he was good, but still receiving “Cs” instead of “As.” When he confronted his professor to see where he could improve, the professor’s comment was “this was an art class, and if you want the subject to look exactly like what you see, you need to use a camera.”
Finding the Artist Within
It was here when Sandoval began navigating the world of experimentation to find his artistic style. Painting in realism came naturally to Sandoval; it was a stretch to uncover the artist within. He notes, like running, it starts with tight muscles and nerves, but once the runner’s high kicks in, it transitions from work to bliss.
In a twist of fate, the dean told Sandoval he was focusing too much on fine art and excused him from his remaining art classes, including oil painting, to focus on business classes. Ultimately, he credits this refocused effort to his being able to eventually start his own advertising agency right here in Colorado Springs—an agency credited in branding Colorado Springs as Olympic City USA.
A New Twist
An auto accident in 2019 left him with a concussion and subsequent consistent headaches. His daughter encouraged him to paint more to activate and exercise his brain. To date, he has almost 40 years in the industry and turns off his work computer every day at 4 p.m. to paint with oils. This led to a surplus of paintings that he sold as there was interest. After posting a new painting of Downtown Raton at Christmas, he left on a family vacation and came back to $5,000 in orders. He thought, “Maybe I have something here.”
He paints nostalgic and inspiring pieces and is moving into painting series that tell a story. He has recently begun painting live at local events, allowing him to meet others in the area with similar passions. In honor of the teachers who served as a catalyst for his pursuing his passion, Sandoval donates a percentage of his online sales to public-school art programs.
“Art, music, and writing are the things that help engineers think differently,” he says.
Website: https://www.bernardsandoval.com/
Facebook: @Bernard.Sandoval.37
Instagram: @SandovalFineArt