January 2020 | Vol. 20 Iss. 01
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PAINTING THE GREATS:
ARTIST FINDS A CAREER BY FOLLOWING HER PASSION By Sarah Morton Taggart | s.taggart@mycityjournals.com
D
aniela Lopez woke up one morning to her phone ringing. The call was from Houston, Texas and like most people, she let it go to voicemail. “I Googled the number, and it was the Toyota Center,” Lopez said. “I freaked out.” The call was from Tad Brown, CEO of the Houston Rockets. He wanted to commission a portrait of Yao Ming, the nationally-recognized basketball star, to be presented at his jersey retirement ceremony. Lopez had 48 hours to complete the painting. Lopez wasn’t a professional artist at the time. That would come later. This was 2016 and Lopez had recently had some time off from her job as a makeup artist. “I had finished my Christmas commissions and wondered what I should do next,” Lopez said. “I wanted to do something that was exciting to me, that I could get hyped about. My family said what if you paint our team, on a giant scale? We’ll probably be the only ones excited about this.” Lopez is huge fan of professional basketball, and her whole family cheers on the Houston Rockets together. She had a few large canvases ready to go and started painting portraits of Rockets players one by one. After posting just three paintings on Instagram, she got the call from Brown. “I never could have imagined anything happening like that,” Lopez said. In the months leading up to that life-changing commission, Lopez was questioning her purpose. “I would go through the motions of waking up extra early to catch the TRAX to work downtown, determined to save money and commute this way to further invest my paychecks into my art supplies, rather than gas and parking. Pulling an eight-hour shift on my feet, riding home tired, giving myself a little pep talk as I stared out the train window.” Lopez would then get home and paint through the night. “Through those long fall and winter months, I kept seeing the numbers 11:11,” said Lopez. “Literally everywhere. Receipts, clocks, train stubs, every time I glanced at my phone. It started to freak me out. I have a lot of spiritual friends who reassured me that this was good. That this meant confirmation from the universe that I was doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” When the time came, Lopez was able to shut out everything else and complete the Yao Ming portrait in time. He stood next to it as his jersey was retired during the halftime of a Houston Rockets home game on February 3, 2017. The team flew Lopez and her mom to Houston to watch the game in person.
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Daniela Lopez poses between portraits she painted of LeBron James and Michael Jordan. (Photo courtesy Daniela Lopez)
“Through that chaotic week of zero sleep to pull off that insane project, it hadn’t even dawned on me that 11 was his jersey number,” Lopez said. Then she entered the arena where red T-shirts with the number 11 were draped over each seat. “I instantly crumbled,” Lopez said. “It felt surreal.”
ROOKIE LEAGUE
Lopez grew up in Midvale and participated in the Boys & Girls Club and Head Start. “I remember doing a lot of crafts and art at Head Start,” Lopez said. “My mom says that’s where it all started.” She continued to draw while a student at Midvale Elementary School. “I always drew faces. Sometimes Disney characters. But always someone’s face,” said Lopez. “I had one adamant teacher in the third grade who planted the seed. She noticed that I was drawing in the corners of my homework and entered me in art contests.” That teacher, Leticia Thomas, remembers Lopez as a very quiet, friendly and smart student. “Daniela always talked about being an artist when she grew up,” said Thomas, who is now a dual language immersion teacher specialist at the Jordan School District. “I am so overwhelmed with joy and cried with happiness
upon reading all her accomplishments,” Thomas said. “I always remind my students that I truly believe each and every one of them had the potential to be successful and that success may look different to different people. I am always there rooting for you from the sidelines, silently cheering you on even if it’s a decade from now.” Lopez moved to West Jordan with her family after sixth grade and graduated from Copper Hills High School. She went on to study fashion design in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. She then used her eye for color and beauty to create art on faces as a freelance makeup artist for Chanel. “I love studying people’s faces,” Lopez said. “Studying their pores, the reflections, the warm light and shadows.” Lopez had continued to draw portraits, but switched from pencil to paintbrush in 2010. “Best day of my life,” said Lopez in an Instagram post.
GOING PRO
Lopez recently posted images of two of her paintings of James Harden, one from 2015 and one from 2017. The evolution of her technique is striking. The earlier image is artistic and skillfully captures the athlete’s likeness. But the later image is in a whole different category. Each hair, each bead of Continued page 8
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