Intimate Pauses is, in many ways, Leticia Sánchez Toledo’s expression of her own interpretation and analysis of the diversity of visual language. These new paintings, which show the artist’s stunning approach to perspective and mood, also show her deep understanding of — and careful attention to — art history, cinematic history, and a broader context of women artists working today.  In the following essay by Dr. Hamlet Fernández, he alludes to Sánchez Toledo’s historical references, especially those like American artist Edward Hopper whose muted, modernist brushstroke was a vehicle for showing intimate domestic scenes. Sánchez Toledo inserts herself not only into that history, but also into the wider dialogue of women artists like Scottish artist Caroline Walker or English-born Cece Philips, to name a few, who deal with similar styles and subject matters, notably the intimacy of female domestic spaces and a play with light, shadow, and line. 

Sánchez Toledo is also a student of film, and a self-proclaimed lover of classic cinema. It is easy to tell that the artist is making explicit references to film, with compositions that are familiar motifs to cinephiles: the diner booth that haunts gangster movies of the 80s and 90s, or the voyeuristic camera-woman that calls to mind Hitchcock’s Rear Window and its numerous remakes and reinterpretations, for example. It is clear that Sánchez Toledo is a skillful painter, but even more so an excellent student of the art world, engaging with a sense of intellectualism and self-reflection.