About my painting Extracción
This painting depicts migration, fire, war, rising and tumultuous seas, pandemics, and an endangered Andean cat. It is a fragile landscape that I hope evokes an emotional connection to the stresses caused by climate change around the world. A better future is possible, although that, perhaps, does not show itself clearly yet.
There are glimpses of hope: a dam in Portugal represents a steady source of energy; the Uru people on Lake Titicaca teach us through their ingenuity, resilience, and partnership with nature that solutions are possible; and ancient American crops of quinoa, corn, and sweet potato continue to sustain us.
The painting also alludes to our need for refuge as we confront the challenges of climate change. We find it in legends that embody our fears so that we can better deal with them as the Kukama people do when they tell the story of el tigre negro, which symbolizes the horror of the late 19th century rubber barons; we find it in great literature as in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera represented by the parrot in the mango tree; and we find it in our daily lives: Argentina wins the world cup, the Knights NYC play Beethoven, and we enjoy picnics with our friends.
The title, Extracción, and my painting’s reference to many of its extended meanings was inspired by the Hispanic Studies (HISP) course 164b and its fall 2022 topic, The Extraction: The Environment and the Toxic Age in Latin America.
Stories link us together…
Stories link us together, across our cultures, our pasts, our futures. I have always told stories in my paintings. They are the way I understand the world and how I fit into it. My paintings are my stage. They allow me to express who I am, and yet they allow me to remain partially hidden in the costumes and affect my roles require.
My paintings narrate not only events in which human and animal actors play, but they also narrate the set on which the stories take place. To me, narration explains how we all fit together with each other and with each component of our environment. It describes the relationships and patterns, the crisscrossings, of our emotions, of our bodies, of rocks exposed in a cliff, of tree branches reaching to the sun, of the way a knight’s suit of armor fits together--ring of mail to ring of mail.
Because I am fascinated by these patterns, it is important to me to specify what I understand about them. And, it is patterns and connections that medieval painters tell me about in their tempera-coated, wooden panels. They dazzle me with their colors and beckon me to come among them--to follow the path to the harbor, to climb the cliffs in the background, to wonder at the leaves linked by fragile stems. These paintings come through seven centuries to tell me stories that connect me to their lives and to their streets and forests.
And, since they have invited me to come to them, the stories in this series of paintings start with them.
Portrait Project
In addition to my narrative paintings, I have been working on a series of portraits in which I tell stories in a different way. Each subject in the portrait chooses a person from history to inhabit and together we and the original image-maker create a new story, but now the stories belong as much to the people I am painting as to me. They are no more my own stories than those I borrow from other times and cultures, and yet they become mine through the painting of them.
The portrait project has evolved into an antidote to my often complicated narrative paintings: alternating between the two kinds of work suits not only my varying time constraints but also my creative and intellectual energies. The portraits are simple and require a different, more tranquil kind of attention than do the narratives. They also teach me new ways of observing and new methods of applying paint. Even though it was never a part of the original plan, I realize this project is setting me down in front of an easel in a classical art training school. Making modern versions of the old masters has become my new teaching tool and has expanded my vocabulary. I’ve never really had any interest in painting flowers, but as a result of my friend Andrea’s choice to be Flora by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, two of the reed boats in my new narrative piece are filled with them. Perhaps soon I’ll discover how or if these two paths of my work cross. Perhaps they will continue to diverge. Perhaps they will join in one. Meanwhile, I’ll keep painting both kinds of stories.
A bit about me
I paint in both oil and gouache, on stretched and unstretched canvas, on gesso panels and paper. My paintings range in size from 12 inches square to 6 feet x 8 feet. A bit about me…
I am a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) where I studied with Henry Schwartz. A longtime resident of Somerville with a studio at 6 Vernon Street, I have exhibited widely and received grants from the Somerville Arts Council among others. My mural-sized painting, Extracción, was exhibited at Brandeis University from April through October and was created in response to the 2023 Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts, “Art in The Year of Climate Action.”