In Life´s Tapestry

 

I like artwork that defies predictability and traverses emotional landscapes. Two recent paintings from our studio Dos Venados in Oaxaca, exemplify this art. 

Amy Córdova Boone has continued her fantastic storytelling through art in her latest piece, called El Peregrino Sagrado; “The Sacred Pilgrim,” (acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 cm.) Her paintings emerge from deep within her psyche. This painting was inspired by a book she wrote and illustrated several years ago, entitled Talking Eagle and the Lady of Roses, published by Steiner Books, NY. 

The story of Guadalupe and Juan Diego is one of the most revered and iconic tomes in Mexican Catholic tradition. It dates back to December 9-12, 1531, when according to tradition, Juan Diego, a devout indigenous man, experienced a series of miraculous encounters with the Virgin Mary on Tepeyac Hill near present-day Mexico City.

During the encounters, the Virgin Mary, appearing as a young indigenous woman, instructed Juan Diego to go to the Bishop and request the construction of a church in her honor on Tepeyac Hill. Initially, the Bishop was skeptical of Juan Diego's claims, but after a series of miraculous occurrences, including the blooming of Castilian roses in the middle of winter and the imprint of the Virgin's image on Juan Diego's tilma (cloak), the Bishop was convinced of the authenticity of Juan Diego's visions.

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe imprinted on Juan Diego's tilma became a symbol of faith and unity for the Mexican people. It is said to contain layers of symbolism that spoke directly to the indigenous population, bridging the gap between their traditional beliefs and Catholicism.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe was eventually built on Tepeyac Hill, becoming one of the most important pilgrimage sites in the Americas. The tilma of Juan Diego, with the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, remains on display in the basilica to this day, attracting millions of visitors each year.

The story of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe is not only a cornerstone of Mexican Catholicism but also a testament to the power of faith, miracles, and the enduring presence of the divine in everyday life.

Within my own oil paintings, I hope to surprise an audience, and do this by occasionally shifting artistic direction. The last few years my work has been somber and introspective. I made a series of "Memento Mori" paintings, where skeletal figures grapple symbolically with mortality. Recently, after I felt closure, my art has taken a dramatic turn towards vibrancy and celebration⏤exemplified by my most recent large piece, Two Dancers at a Fiesta, (oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm.)  It is in a world bursting with color and life. The canvas pulsates with the energy of the dance floor, as two figures whirl and twirl amidst a jubilant fiesta atmosphere. The subjects dance along with the brilliant colors and bold twirling designs. Even the floor is bursting with vibrancy. Gone are the solemn reminders of mortality; instead, we revel in the joyous rhythms of corporeal existence.

This shift is not only in artistic evolution but also the embrace of multifaceted human experience. Through my paintings, I embrace both the darkness and the light, finding beauty and meaning in every aspect of life's tapestry.

To see Amy and Steven´s Mexico inspired work, go to Dos Venados Studio

Venetia

To be honest, the skeleton motif took me by surprise here in Mexico and then I stayed with it⏤creating about a dozen paintings so far. Certainly there are those who have followed and collected my artwork over the decades who are bewildered and perplexed by my departure from landscape painting. All I can say is this is Oaxaca, Mexico and I have been influenced and like it. People ask when I will go back to landscapes. I don’t know.

My latest is called Venice Vanitas. It shows that even in one of the most desirable places, Venice, Italy, amidst youth, luxury, pomp, élan, gaiety and romance, death is a commanding presence. 

Everyone is always aware of death on an unconscious level. It is omnipresent. We are born with our days numbered. A germ can take over the body and cause it to fail. Sudden accidents occur. People can even die of melancholy. In the 18th century, death certificates signed by the British clergy listed as many as 41 different causes of death, including 'suffocated by wet nurse or mother'. 

Not that we dwell on all this and live fearfully. That is perhaps why I am bringing death to the fore. As if to say, “I see you, and I am okay with you being always around.”

In the painting Venice Vanitas, a lovely young woman is enjoying a gondola ride on the grand canal. She holds red flowers, symbolizing life. A mask is nearby, symbolizing deception⏤life can be deceiving. The water is flowing life force; bringing us from birth to death and always onward. The bridge is passage from one world to the next. The skeleton gondoleer is death, determining when life will eventually end.

A story:

Once upon a time in Venice, there was a young woman named Venetia. She was known throughout the city for her beauty and her love of life. One sunny day, she decided to take a gondola ride on the grand canal, the main artery of Venice.

As she drifted along the canal, Venetia held in her hand a bouquet of red flowers, symbolizing the beauty and vitality of life. But nearby, a mask lay on the seat, a reminder that life can be deceiving, that appearances can be false.

The water flowed around her, a reminder of the life force that carries us all from birth through death. A bridge she passed often spanned the canal, a symbol of the progress from one world to the next, from the living to the dead.

Guiding the gondola stood the Grim Reaper, a reminder that death is always with us, determining when our time on earth will come to an end.

Despite the reminder of death, Venetia was not afraid. She knew that life was meant to be lived to the fullest, and she was determined to enjoy every moment of it. She smiled at the skeleton behind her, knowing that one day they would meet again, but for now, she was content to enjoy the beauty of Venice and the joy of being alive.

As the gondola glided along the canal, Venetia breathed in the salty sea air and felt the warmth of the sun on her face. She knew that life was fleeting, but she also knew that it was beautiful, and that she would always cherish the memories of this moment. And so she continued to smile, holding her bouquet of red flowers, enjoying the ride, and living her life to the fullest.

Keeper of the Key

"Keeper of the Key, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 70 cm

Amy´s newest painting from our studio in San Pedro Ixtlahuaca, Mexico, outside Oaxaca.
In her own words:

The seated figure holds a key that invites one to explore the inner self. Like Turtle, her Mother, she is still and yet clearly present. Her garment of blossoming beauty represents the bounty of La Madre Tierra and a tribute to growing things.
She is grounded as the result of life’s long journey. Like Mother Turtle, she waits and watches in silence. She, like ourselves, always will remain , the Ancient Child, born from life giving waters, the splendor of moonlight and the magical realms of spirit, of which…we ALL possess the key to journey within.
Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent reminds us that though we may be surrounded by forces we cannot comprehend…fear will not be our response. 

Many years ago, I wrote the text for a children’s book I called, “The Turtle’s Daughters”. I created it as a pageant piece for a grand elementary school event in St. Paul , Mn. The event was sponsored by Art Start/ Art Scraps of St. Paul, an amazing non profit that brings art experiences to underprivileged communities. Several artists were hired to  work within the schools to help the children create images and objects which would be part of our procession. On an overcast Saturday afternoon, over 1000 children and families participated along the banks of the mighty Mississippi river. We honored Turtle Island (Our Earth) and her lovely water daughters, the great rivers of our planet. I read my story, accompanied by a Native American elder who softly played his flute, which mesmerized the atmosphere allowing the story to come alive.

Children of many cultures from several city schools came together to march with their creations in a marvelous parade. Some performed my tale as a dance, complete with a moving gossamer blue river made from yards of fabric. Many groups carried handmade animal banners, large painted cardboard deer and buffalo. Children carried puppets: flocks of papier-maché  birds, turtles , frogs, and many more creatures. 

Our purpose? A call to grownups to wake up, see, and acknowledge that “progress and profit” should NOT be our main goal, as human “Beings.” Together, we must work as one to protect the fragile beauty of Turtle Island, and of those of fur, feather, and fin, who have no voice…  whose survival also depends on the well being of our sacred planet.  

The students answered my call that day. They became “Child Warriors of the Healing Earth”. Although, I never submitted my story for publication, I have never forgotten the power and beauty of that somewhat rainy day moment in time.

Nothing could have stopped us.

The memory lives with me still. Every now and then, I add another voice through my imagery to make that story live on.

Bendito Sea

For more artwork: Amy Córdova Boone

 

A Smile In Return For A Smile

The poor jungle nations of Asia never appealed to me. Cambodia fell further in my opinion after learning of the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime during the civil war, 1991-1997, when millions were ruthlessly massacred. So I arrived in Cambodia after a sojourn in Thailand with trepidation, and have been pleasantly surprised. The people are gracious, more fluent in English, and smiling too. Cambodia is the country cousin to Thailand, without an ultra modern city like Bangkok.

My journey to Siem Reap from Bangkok went smooth enough, and when I arrived at my hotel after 10 in the evening, I found my room spacious and comfortable. The next morning complimentary breakfast satisfied my taste, especially with a cook in the room making custom omelets to order, and after walking around the neighborhood visiting a nearby grand temple and old town with bustling market full of foods, fabrics, and arts & crafts, my previous attitude melted away.

If there were any doubts of the value of being in Cambodia, they have been completely erased by Angkor Wat and the cheerful beauty of Cambodians. I had seen photos of the largest temple complex in the world and was not impressed by the drab colors and jungle scenery. I did not know that it is the most visited sacred site in the world, and if I did, that would have discouraged me further.

I set out this morning before dawn with Francesca, an Italian I met on the flight from Bangkok and became friends with, and Dara, our trusted and smiling tuktuk driver. Even before we got on the road to the temple, tuktuks with passengers were everywhere going in the same direction through the darkness. Fifteen minutes and we were pulling up to Angkor Wat and joining a throng of people walking toward the featureless dark temple. A crowd was already massed at a lake, unable to go further until opening time. As the sun rose the sky brightened behind the spiraling domes and slowly the temple features became visible in bluish tinges with a rosy sky above, embellished by fluffy clouds of purple. We were a bit in awe and simultaneously disappointed to be at the back of a crowd, unable to get the pictures we wanted. Surprisingly, a charming little girl arrived by our side in the half-light and took an order for coffee, then dutifully arrived back in minutes with tasty hot drinks. When we continued forward my impressions steadily rose at the base of the complex while I looked up at the massive scale of the carved rock and orderly beauty of the temple. As we strolled, it became apparent we were in no ordinary place. The crowds quickly thinned so we were actually quite alone. The place is so huge, people set out in all directions by foot and tuktuk. Our wandering excursion took seven hours and there is far more to see, but we were overwhelmed, hot, and growing tired. I bought a ticket that allows for two more visits.

 

At various times Dara would find us and drive us from temple to temple. Always, the beauty was great along with the dimensions, especially in grandness of design and the ubiquitous stone carvings adorning every facade and corner. Angkor Wat is more interesting for the fact that it began Hindu and later shifted to Buddhist, so the two influences are mingled. The jungle through the ages has entwined with structures, so that huge trees are often seen growing out of temples and snake-like roots wrap around carved block. Many stone faces appear, sphinx like and huge in improbable places high above, adorning towers. Often, monks in orange saffron robes are seen making an accent amid the monotone structures, and I loved taking their picture. Always a smile in return for a smile. And that is the way it has been in Cambodia so far.  

A Tinge Of Sad Feeling

There is something about the dying of summer bloom and leaves falling from trees—scurrying to oblivion in cold autumn wind. . . that brings a tinge of sad feeling. Oh, beautiful colors bring delight to the eyes, and often, after a cold night, the air warms to perfection, but there is no holding on; winter comes and with it cold death. 

The beauty to all this is renewal. We know that life comes back again in the spring and with it a new face of youth. And this is the stuff of poetry and art: the wheel of life, death, and resurrection. The eternal working of the Creator in His Cosmos.

Autumn Song
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1883)


Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
   Laid on it for a covering,
   And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
   In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
   Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
   Bound up at length for harvesting,
   And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

Thank God For Beauty

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun
And find your shoulder to light on,
To bring you luck, happiness and riches
Today, tomorrow and beyond.

~Irish Blessing

Lately, I have been waking up from sleep with some anxiety, since my gallery is floundering under the poor economy. Especially difficult is that during the last four months, a large investment was made preparing for and installing a critically popular and well attended show of portraits by twenty-five artists, called HEADS UP—but the sales have been negligent. So I am scrambling to survive.

This morning, I arrived at my gallery to open, and noticed across the street that a garden is in bloom. I took my camera and walked over to take pictures. Right on cue, a beautiful butterfly landed on a flower and opened it’s wings to share with me it’s beauty before it fluttered off, not a care in the world. 

Thank God for beauty.

Ghosts, Beauty, And Suicide

Yesterday I walked with a friend to a place where many suicides have occurred. It is near the rough and tumble old west town of Taos, at the foot of mountains where Taos Indians have lived in their pueblo village for many centuries, and close to where many people have sworn they have heard a mysterious sound called the Taos Hum, featured on the television program called Unsolved Mysteries.

We had to park our car and walk before setting foot on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, a fantastic metal span, 650 feet above the river below. Narrow walkways allow pedestrians access on either side of the two lane highway that crosses over the gorge. The day was bright and balmy, but steady strong gusts of wind buffeted us, and almost immediately my friend complained she was dizzy. In fact, it is easy to get vertigo so high in the air above ground, but the view is breathtaking and so spectacular that the draw is almost irresistible. Standing in the middle of the span, visitors can lean against a railing that is chest high, then gaze out and down to the wild, relentless river far below. To stand there in the proud and primitive setting is to be inches away from certain death. I felt something primeval and compelling about looking closely into such a grand abyss—as if in one second I could disappear forever by crossing the thinnest of lines.

It is said that a ghost inhabits the bridge and has caused people to jump. She appears as a young Hispanic woman wearing jeans and a white T-shirt who is visible one moment, then suddenly disappears. I cannot say that I believe in ghosts like that, but I do say that people carry ghosts inside themselves and that these “demons” can do harm and even drive a person to suicide.

What is true is that invisible vestiges of doubt or fear can be lodged in a human psyche, and whatever a person does to root out this “ghost” can fail, so it lingers as if in a haunted house.

I knew the last person to be confirmed as having committed suicide off the bridge. The last time I saw her was when she modeled for a drawing group on a summer evening, and afterward we talked outside under the moonlight. She seemed very animated and also to be slipping into darkness and then scrambling out again. Her boyfriend had left her; she was plagued with self-doubt and had money problems. Her intelligence was astute enough that she had written, produced, and then performed in many one-woman theatrical productions that had been favorably received, and gained reviews in the local newspaper. In her productions, she tried exorcising her ghosts by making light of her personal problems and how she felt that she did not fit in the world. Shortly after our meeting, I learned that her car had been found by the bridge, and she was missing. About a week later, her body was found, miles down stream, caught in brush and partly submerged in the river. Had the ghost spoken a spell in her ears? For some, the peace of death, and the urge to control the pain of life by a "final solution" ultimately gets the better hand.

After my friend and I peered off the side of the bridge, we walked along the West Rim Trail amidst rugged, wide-open mesas and chiseled steep canyons.  The elevation along the river is 6,100 feet and rises 800 feet at the gorge rim. Along the way we often stopped to gaze from the mesa top above the river at stunning and breathtaking views of the Rio Grande Gorge and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Not once did I see a ghost.

Within Each Heartbeat

People ask if I am having difficulty adjusting to “being back.” Not really, except that for the past year I did not live anywhere longer than three weeks, and now, I have a street address again. I see with new eyes, and clearly notice that American society is largely based on consumerism, and status based on acquisition. Every day we are barraged with advertising that tells us we need to be better off in life, and subsequently most people think that they are falling short, because they do not have everything that “experts” insist that they need. God forbid if you do not have a house and car, and wander from place to place with barely any possessions. Maybe I am an anomaly, but it is why I could relate so easily to everyone everywhere I went. I have no pictures in my head of how things “should” be, but what life gives me in present moments is incredible. What more do I want? Often, the answer is nothing because the intangible greatness that lies within each heartbeat is entirely satisfying. Maybe this yearning to live purely in moments is what drove me to travel as I did. Perhaps, in the end, I felt trapped and harassed in a consumer-oriented society and wanted more than stale offerings. Now, I am in the game again, but oddly feel detached.

In my studio, beautiful things that I collected overseas surround me; wooden sailing ships, hand-knotted silk rugs, paintings made entirely from butterfly wings, and more. If I do not sell them quickly, it is okay because they give me pleasure. Further, they remind me of the greater world . . . and connect me to other moments, earlier in THE DREAM. Next week, people will begin to come to look at these things, and I will enjoy sharing the beautiful objects from far off places. Sometimes, I will have an intimate story to tell.
To see some of the items I collected, click, Steven Boone’s World Bazaar.

Eternity In An Hour

“When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.”
Paul Cezanne  (French, 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906)

This is a beautiful statement because it simply accomplishes so much in the way of art criticism, which often is full of hyperbole. If we think of nature, we naturally think of beauty: flowers, sunsets, beaches, forests and misty mountain tops. Let me add that it is also: naked flesh, all creatures, bloody wounds, storms, wide eyed babies and old folk croaking their last breath. There is much to compare and all quite stunning. Great artists have to accomplish breadth in their work. Not a task for the faint hearted.

“To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour. ”
William Blake  (English, 28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827)