Cooper Sanchez is a native Georgian living in Clarkston, an old farming community outside of Decatur. Born in Rome, Georgia, he has also lived in Charleston, SC, Savannah, Ga, and New York, NY. He moved to Atlanta after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1999. He began his career as a collage artist and national editorial illustrator. Sanchez has since developed a painting and drawing style which combines an interest in refined classical aesthetics with a raw approach inspired by folk art of the American south.
In 2008, he was one of five national artists chosen for the prestigious William and Dorothy Yeck Young Painters Award, hosted by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.Sanchez is also a professional garden designer specializing in the rehabilitation of historic gardens. In 2015, he won a Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation award for the rejuvenation of an elaborate 1920’s era water feature located on the grounds of the Cator Woolford Estate in Decatur, Ga. For the past eight years he has maintained and helped to restore Historic Oakland Cemetery, a Victorian garden cemetery in the heart of Atlanta. For Sanchez, Oakland is a place to combine both his fine art and horticultural aesthetic practices.
