Iris

I finished this on a couple of days ago, I was waiting for the paint to dry a little to take the picture and post it.

This is one of our plants in the front yard, the only irises on my block to bloom twice a year, in spring and fall. I took some pictures last year and had been toying with the idea of painting them (they are so delicate and voluptuous), but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to represent it faithfully. So, a year later, I took a deep breath and went for it!

I don't know why, but I do that a lot... I listen to that little nagging voice in the back of my mind ("you can't do it", "you're not good enough", "you're such a fake, who do you think you're kidding?") and chicken out. It happens when I'm thinking about submitting my work to a juried competition or a gallery, it happened before I decided to start this blog (took me months to make up my mind) and I hate it!!!.So, maybe I'll use this painting as a reminder to ignore that stupid little voice and go for it! In the end, it's just paint...I can always start over.

The Survivor

"I return with overwhelming hope
and the ghosts I took with me
and everyone's slums and the friend
that used to be here but is no more

we are all broken but whole
decimated by forgiveness and bad habits
a little more worn and wiser
older and more sincere

I return without duel and it has rained so much
in my absence in my streets in my world
that I get lost in the names and confuse
the rain with tears

I return/ I want to believe I am returning
with my best and worst history
I know this road by heart
but I still feel surprised"

Excerpt from "I want to believe I am returning", by Mario Benedetti

I believe we are all, in our own way, survivors. We all experience loss and despair in different ways (a death in the family, a near death experience, wars, illness...), we all have to confront fears one time or another and although we may come from different backgrounds and the losses and the fears are different, our response is almost the same: we adapt to survive.

This poem is about coming back from exile (Benedetti had to leave his country during the dictatorship in Uruguay), but to me, his words have always given a voice to those who have survived an ordeal (be it exile, death, disease or war) and as a result found themselves changed; not quite unrecognizable but very much unlike the person they used to be.

When I finished this piece, I couldn't help but think of this poem, the image of this being coming back from the unknown, unrecognizable, leaving behind the very thing that changed him and coming back to the world as we know it, not as a different person, but as a different version of himself. What will the road home look like through those new eyes? what does the world feel like on that new skin? how will he use his new voice, unknown to everyone, even himself? what will he see the first time he looks in the mirror? how much of himself did he leave behind? and how much of the experience that changed him is coming back with him?.

Ari's Cala

Cala lillies are one fo my husband's favorite flowers. I painted this piece fast year, as an anniversary present for him. I was looking for a way to display the flower in a more unusual view (this piece is much larger than life, about 20"X20") , play with the contrast of lights and shadows and achieve a sense of light emanating from it.

In the end he loved it, which, to me is all that matters (not only because I made it for him, but because he's one of the toughest critics I know!).

Sorrow, or the eyes of a blue dog

'I'll recognize you on the street when I see a woman writing 'Eyes of a blue dog' on the walls. And she, with a sad smile- which was already smile of surrender to the impossible, the unreachable- said: 'Yet you won't remember anything during the day'. And she put her hands back over the lamp, her features darkened by a bitter cold. 'You're the only man who doesn't remember anything of what he's dreamed after he wakes up'.

Excerpt from "Eyes of a Blue Dog", by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This is another of my favorite pieces. Only after I finished it did I realize what it was really about: My favorite short story, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Eyes of a Blue Dog" (Ojos de Perro Azul, in spanish).

The story is bout a couple of soulmates who can only meet in their dreams. They cannot touch, only talk to each other. They can't even remember where they're from. When she awakes, the only thing she remembers is that he tells her she has "the eyes of a blue dog", and as she goes searching for him, she goes repeating on the street, to everyone who will listen: "Eyes of a blue dog". Him, on the other hand, although he loves her, cannot remember what he calls her when he awakes.

It's a beautiful, sad story and I've always been moved by it. For some reason, this piece makes me think about what their good-byes must have been like, right before they awoke.

Lucky Koi

This is one of my personal favorites (and the closest I am to having a koi pond in my house). It almost painted itself.

I've always loved the elegance and playfulness of the koi, they also live for many years and in eastern cultures are used as a symbol of strength (when they swim against the current of the river) and good luck, two things of which is always good to have plenty of.

Willow

I pass this tree on the way to my house almost everyday. Ever since we moved here, I've been amazed by its beauty, the color it turns in the winter and the beautiful yellow flowers during the spring, how its branches reach to the sky, like open hands, begging for sun and rain.


When we're driving home and I see it, I know I'll be home in no time; to me its almost a marker, or maybe a gentle giant, or a guardian that never fails to let me know when I'm getting close to the border between the world and the place I call home

Nocturnal

"The summer demands and takes away too much
But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives
more than it takes"

John Ashberry

I've always been attracted to night time. It has always been one of my favorite times of day. Lately, I've been working on more nocturnal pieces, such as this one. One of the reasons I enjoy doing them so much is because I am mesmerized by the interaction between light and dark. As I let them feed of each other throughout the painting I realize how these two opposing forces become dependent of each other, gaining strength from each other's intensity. In the end, I realized: you can't have light without the shadows

Mystic Moon

"There is so much solitude in that gold
the moon of these nights is not the moon
the first Adam saw. The long centuries
of human vigil have filled it
of antique cries.Look at it. It is your mirror"

Poem "The moon", by Jorge Luis Borges

A good friend of mine started doing moonscapes a while ago. She took pictures, studied it, stared at it lying on the floor and painted it ...now, every time I see a beautiful full moon somewhere, I think of her and her moons. I, too started taking pictures... and watching it, and thinking...hardly do we think of the history behind our surroundings... how many poets, painters, singer, lovers have been moved by the moon outside our window? How many people are admiring the same beauty on the same night? how many stories have been told about our moon?.

Somehow, I don't feel so alone while watching the moon from my window late at night.

Rose

One of the reasons I love painting flowers is how unique the textures and shapes of the petals are. In this particular case, the flower seemed to have its own topography; the delicate petals formed mountains and valleys within the flower, almost a private universe in my yard.