Under the gypsy moon

"Under the gypsy moon
all things are looking at her
and she can't see them"

Excerpt from "Sleepwalking Romance", by Federico Garcia Lorca.

I love Flamenco, the passion and feeling in the music and dance is intoxicating. I finished this piece yesterday. I'd been thinking about doing it for a while, and yesterday, all of the sudden, I started working and didn't stop until it was done. I'm pretty happy with it.

Dreaming in color

This is an older painting, but I love it. The subject is my (very spoiled) Labrador Retriever, Gala. One night I caught her sleeping on our bed (using a pillow) and I just couldn't help but draw her. This painting is based on that drawing, but just as I started to paint the sheets the painting started taking a life of is own, and I started using all these crazy colors (instead of the colors of the sheets).In the end, she wasn't just sleeping, she was dreaming.

Irises

They're back!!!, aren't they lovely? so delicate, so fragile and so beautiful.

Waiting for Spring

Just as spring comes to an end, I finished one of my watercolors, called "Waiting for Spring". Well, it started as a watercolor and ended as a mixed media. It all started when we trimmed on of our Forsythias and I kept some small branches, because i wanted to put them in water and see if they would bloom. Well, they did, and I liked them so much that i decided to paint them, I started with watercolor and the result was "acceptable", but then, after months of not looking at it, I discovered acrylic inks and voila!, I started glazing, accenting, playing until I was happy with it. I like the result very much, I love using intense colors, so when i found these inks I was hooked!. So, as spring ends, I decided to post it, since I won't see those crazy yellow flowers until next year.

Oblivion is full of memories

"Oblivion is full of memory"

-Mario Benedetti

This watercolor started as a means of illustrating an idea: Where do forgotten memories go?. We all have cherished memories of special times; special anniversaries, birthdays, loved ones, songs, holidays...but, what of all those day to day things we took for granted? our everyday ride to school, or the neighbor we met everyday in the elevator, all those little ingredients of routine we never pay attention to, but that in the end molded us into who we are today.All these tiny details, forgotten, ignored...like ghosts in some distant corner of our minds, waiting to be remembered, recovered...like little gems.

I found these little bottles in a tag sale one Sunday afternoon, they were just sitting there, ignored by everybody, dusty and old. Did they ever hold any treasures? some golden elixir? how long ago were they forgotten? how did they end up on a table by the side of the road, $1 for all of them? None of these questions have answers in my mind. They made me think of forgotten things, ideas, moments, people, pieces of my life. Somehow, they became the vessels where all that was forgotten was being kept; little gems inside old bottles. Will I ever get them back in their pure form?.

If I try to look at them through the glass, they are forever changed by the distortion and the color of the glass, just like time and experience, changing forever our perception of the past. Can I recover them, or are they lost forever?... and if I have lost them, have I also lost the part of myself attached to them?

First Breath

I used two of my favorite subjects for this piece: flowers and the human figure. This image invaded my mind one day, and what started as a simple line drawing took a life of its own, until it pretty much ran wild and started to paint itself on the canvas. It took quite a while to complete (over a month), in part because oil paints take a while to dry, but mostly because it's pretty big (48"X36").

This piece is about overcoming a particular difficult period of life. I like the metaphor of the lotus flower, this tiny little seed uses all the deposits at the bottom of its pool as nourishment and becomes a beautiful flower, shooting up from the bottom of darkness. I believe we can learn a thing or two from this little flower; we need to learn to overcome all the fear, pain and uncertainty we encounter in our paths, use these experiences to learn from them and to allow our spirit to grow, and as we overcome our mistakes take the final step: forgive others and more importantly, ourselves. Let go of everything and take our first breath, without fear or regrets.

This painting has a lot to do with my personal experiences, it's almost a self portrait (although I look nothing like the woman from the painting). It was after finishing this particular piece that I began doing more figurative work. The human body is capable of telling amazing stories with just one gesture and I am fascinated by the opportunity of capturing just a glimpse of that ability.

A Window Home

"I myself sometimes fear
that nothing, ever, has existed
that my memory lied,
that each time and aways
-because I have changed-
what I've lost also changes"

Liber Falco

This excerpt of Falco's poem, "What was" ("Lo que fue") always makes me think of home and all the people we left behind, friends and memories we cherished, faded memories and pieces of our lives, familiar streets, sounds and smells.

I was thinking of all this one day, the year we moved to Massachusetts. A new house, so different from what we knew!.I used to live on a 12th floor back home. One of my favorite things to do was looking out the windows at night, when all the buildings became illuminated and turned into light, when trees became a prolongation of the mountains and the city came to life and even the eternal traffic jams on the highway heading east look pretty.

I painted this watercolor from what I think I remember from those lost nights. I am not the same person who enjoyed that view, I'm older and wiser now...and I'm sure this is not an exact reproduction of Caracas' skyline at night as seen from my old apartment, cities change, they get bigger, older, more crowded...but it is how I remember it in my heart. It is my window home

My New Sky

"Another Sky"

A sponge to wash the sky does not exist
even if you could lather it
and then throw buckets of the sea
and hang it under the sun to dry
you would still miss a quiet bird

there are no methods to touch the sky
but even if you reached out like a palm tree
and manage to caress it in your deliriums
and finally found out how it feels to the touch
you would still miss the cotton cloud

a bridge to cross the sky does not exist
but even if you managed to reach the other side
through memories and prophecies
and were able to prove that it isn't that hard
you would still miss a pine tree at dusk

this is because that sky is not yours
even though it is impetuous and torn
on the other hand when you reach the one that belongs to you
you won't want to wash it touch it or cross it
but the bird the cloud and the pine tree will be there

Mario Benedetti.

With my apologies to Mr Benedetti for the translation. This is my favorite poem. It speaks to me because for many years, I tried to find what would make me happy in all the wrong places, and while I accomplished a lot academically, I was never truly happy. It took years of soul searching but I was finally ready to admit it:I was not happy. As much as I accomplished, I always felt something missing from my life... until I discovered art. It was like taking a very deep breath after being under water for longer than I can remember, and finally, the search was over:Art is my new sky.