The great jazz player Louis Armstrong said, “Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them.” I have always thought artists don’t retire.
Amy and I have slowed down our usual pace of making art. The huge project of moving to Mexico and into our big house on a fairly large property absorbs us. The number of hours we work has not changed much.
I enjoy the grounds. We arrived at the end of the dry season and it seemed many of the plants were dead. Not so. It has begun raining and they are all turning green. Below our home, down a hill I spied a clump of yellow flowers all in a heap. On further inspection, they turned out to be what was left of a tree cut down many months ago. The limbs had enough life that they were blooming. Kind of like a chicken that has its head cut off continues running around. I brought many of the limbs home and stuck them in our pond that receives the waste water for the house. It has aquatic plants that clean and filter the water. That was a few weeks ago and the blooms have continued. I dug holes and planted them this past week and they are showing signs of growth. This magic occupies my imagination and inspires me.
As for art, Amy is working on making a bilingual edition of the book she illustrated called Dreamcarver, (El Tallador De Suenos) by Diana Cohn. Some of the images are reworked and the text includes Spanish. And she has begun work on a painting of Tonantzin: the original mother deity of ancient Mexico who predates Guadalupe.
Painting in progress. 50x50 cm, Frida Kahlo, oil on canvas. |
I am at work on an image of Frida Kahlo that is taking far longer than usual for me. I made a few mistakes early on and had to go back and fix them. Paintings have a life of their own. Some children are born in a wink of the eye, others seem to take forever.