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"  Coming of age during Colombia&amp;#039;s violent drug war in the &amp;#039;80s wasn&amp;#039;t easy for Medell\u00EDn-born Sandra Mack-Valenica. The artist, whose work depicts strong women in extravagant costumes of royal lineage, said the sudden landscape of widows and women was a kind of forced matriarchy. Since 2000, Mack-Valencia has lived in New York, exhibiting her work everywhere from a Brooklyn sex shop to a Manhattan church. CFL chatted with the painter about her art and life.  Latinas Re-Maid When I moved here I saw the Hollywood stereotype where all the Latinas were depicted as housekeepers. They were never the smart one. Or the strong one. My artwork was a reaction to that. I made these queens that looked strong, that wore dresses that looked powerful, but they were still holding their cleaning gloves and dusters. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman In the beginning, my father, who was a self-taught artist, didn&amp;#039;t want me to be a painter. But it didn&amp;#039;t have to do with being a woman. He knew how difficult it was to be an artist. How difficult it was to make a living. He didn&amp;#039;t want me to go through that. When I told him, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to art school,&amp;quot; he was like, &amp;quot;Oh, no! Why?&amp;quot; But once I started going and showed him the work, I heard him bragging to his friends, &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s great with color. She&amp;#039;s going to be better than I am.&amp;quot; He was proud. The Muerto That Got Her to Move to New York One day, living in Colombia, I was leaving the house early and heading to the bus stop\u2014and there was a corpse. Right there. To me it was just another corpse. I didn&amp;#039;t feel anything. Other people started coming to wait for the bus. The bus came and we took it. Then I realized later that this was just crazy. I didn&amp;#039;t want to feel that I didn&amp;#039;t care anymore. That really got me thinking about ways of getting out of the country. The Latina Lucha in the Art World It&amp;#039;d be foolish if I didn&amp;#039;t acknowledge that there is a minority of women\u2014and even less Latinas\u2014in the New York art scene. It&amp;#039;s dominated by men. It&amp;#039;s obvious when you go to galleries or read the art news. But it doesn&amp;#039;t make me feel like &amp;quot;Oh, that&amp;#039;s the way it is and I&amp;#039;m not going to try.&amp;quot; No. It&amp;#039;s totally the opposite. Showing Her Art in a Brooklyn Sex Shop One of the owners is an artist and when she first opened the sex shop she had a call for work that was erotic. Being in a sex shop, my work was a little more erotic than what I usually do. It was playful. It was mythological. I did a Pegasus, but really it was a &amp;quot;Penisus.&amp;quot; It was a big penis with wings and a woman riding it. Some guys looked a little uncomfortable. But the women got it. It was humorous. I was playing with gender and sexual stereotypes.  Find more of Sandra Mack-Valencia&amp;#039;s work on her website. Image courtesy of Sandra Mack-Valencia "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/news/a12606/sandra-mack-valencia-interview/>