Heart Connected To Place

 

I am among Mexicans now. Each day I walk the cobbled streets and walkways of Guanajuato City where I am living. All manner of people greet me and I find if I make eye contact and smile even a little, a warm acknowledgement occurs with reciprocation.

The narrow passages wind about, and when I stop to buy meat at a carniceria (butcher shop), stop in a farmacia for personal incidentals, buy fruit or vegetables at a stand or pick up bread at a paneria, I get by with the little Spanish I know. If I don't understand the exact amount I owe, I reach in my pocket and pull out my change and they take the coins needed and wave me off with a smile.
Everything is cheaper than in the USA.

Tonight, Saturday, I wandered into the city centre (about a ten minute walk) and found street performers, happy crowds of families, all types of people, and roving groups of singers dressed in spectacular costumes with instruments entertaining groups of spectators, getting them to join in singing familiar songs.

I am quickly coming under the spell of this vibrant city. The quicker I assimilate into the culture, the happier I am. I don't like playing “tourist.”

Today I started a painting of a Mexican man leaning against a wall, wearing a broad brimmed hat, looking down at a paper in his hand. A flower pot with blooming plants is next to him and doorway behind. I have made my kitchen into an impromptu studio—it has a big table, is spacious with large windows lending plenty of light.

I am indulging my passion for street photography. Setting forth walking, sometimes for hours I disappear into the path ahead, rambling, only aware of light, texture, sound, the motions of people and the congruence of forms. It is easy to slip into THE DREAM. I am not aware of myself as separate; I am what I see as boundaries disappear. I enjoy taking my chances with odd pictures and look for poignant fleeting images that come and go quickly.

Sometimes I am surrounded by people with cameras, often smartphones attached to the end of sticks so they can take "selfies." I have no interest in this and I do not try and take great tourist pictures. There are photographers with much better equipment and more camera knowledge than I who will always do better. What I bring is my own way of seeing, and a heart connected to place.

Expressing Inner Life

Artists are often reluctant to interpret their work when asked. A reason could be that the artwork is like a child and the artist the parent. The parent does not want to interpret the child, but rather have the child speak.

Hand of a Muse, mixed-media on panel, 20 x 16 inches (50 x 40 cm)

Furthermore, often there is great mystery in creating art—and it is not easily put into words. Accidents come into play (that are not accidents at all), and the art seems to breath and have a life of its own. Sometimes I finish a piece and when standing back to look, I catch myself saying, Wow, did I do that?

I have been making three-dimensional art recently and often, hands are included. The one shown here is new. I wanted to use a hand with forearm. It had to be situated so that it expressed itself. I had the thought that it could be dragging colors with fingertips across the white ground. To cover the arm, I had the idea to use pieces of broken mirror. 

As I broke a mirror into bits with a hammer, a piece struck me in my left eye. Ouch! Then I thought, How stupid of me. Why was I not wearing eye protection? Thankfully, I did not need to go to an emergency room and my eye was not cut. That was several days ago and it is still sore. I wonder why my left eye was injured (everything that goes wrong with me or suffers injury is on the left), and I also ask if it was fate that by breaking a mirror, which held my image, I would feel torment? Oh well, as they say, "No pain, no gain."

Now that the art piece is done, I will make an attempt to interpret it:

The white rectangle ground represents purity of space. White contains all the colors. The hand represents human endeavor, and art. It is interacting with the white, bringing forth colors that plays from fingertips. 

Color is vibrant life, like the inner life of an artist. The bits of mirror reflect light and the real world. They are broken in fragments, but recreating to be part of a whole—coming together to be part of the magic artist that is expressing inner life like reflections in a mirror.

As I finished, I decided to pour white over the colors streaming from the fingertips, to soften their notes, and further the mystery of coming forth from an enveloping matrix.

One day I noticed that I could go on working my art motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me. (Georges Braque)