No Te Rindas en La Primer Caida: Don't give up in the first fall.

In December of this year I was invited to give a workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACO).  I hadn't been to Mexico in years, and was reminded how much I loved the Mexican people-their warmth, their humor and their openness.  I was also reminded of how much I have been influenced by Mexican Folk Art.

In Oaxaca I found a number of  little paintings on aluminum  and bought seven($6 each).  Based very loosely on the Mexican Retablo, a Latin American devotional painting, they are humorous, often sexual, and truly wonderful, all six inches by five inches, hung with a piece of heavy thread from a small nail hole in the metal. They are where I want to go with my own work:  essential, honest, and simply painted with no fuss or muss.  I love the loosely painted yellow background on the slick metal surface with the overpainting of the bossy little skeleton wrestler .  Red, black, and white-how much simpler can you get? In real life, the Mexican wrestlers wear masks much like the one our little skeleton is wearing, so he is able to be both a "real" skeleton and a "real" wrestler at the same time. And finally, what a great life message, "don't give up in the first fall".  Truly words to live by.
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