A Life in Mexico

This is the fourth straight day of snow here. More tomorrow...more the next day. So you shouldn’t be surprised that my thoughts turn more and more to warmer climes. I’ve been to many temperate places, but the one I love most is Mexico. We have been there a half dozen times in the past few years, but we blew this year’s travel budget on a trip to central Europe in the late fall. While that was an amazing time (more later), I feel somewhat unfulfilled, especially now in the grim gray cold of winter.

The place we go to is San Miguel de Allende, a small city in the western Sierra Madres. If you were to have a map of Mexico and put your finger smack in the middle of the country, you’d be pretty close to where it is. San Miguel was settled long ago and became developed during the Spanish colonial period. There are many historic buildings there, some dating back to the 1500s. Narrow cobbled streets, hills, gardens, flowers–all the things you can imagine such a place would have. It is heaven for painters–brilliant clear light, rich colors, appealing landscapes, colorful people, wonderful architecture–a lifetime worth of subjects. Not to mention the food!

The people are friendly, mildly tolerant of foreigners, very industrious and wary of politics. Much of the economy is based on bartering–I’ll trade my party tent for a month’s worth of your tortillas. They seem to have many business talents. I know a guy who has an exterminating business, a party and candy store and a pizza place. Everyone is some kind of retailer. There are markets dotted all over town, concessionaires, rolling carts, people selling things from a bag they carry around and fully developed markets each with dozens of merchant booths. Some of the people squat in spots they’ve had for years to sell flowers, toys, balloons, ice cream, newspapers. Painters' subjects everywhere...

I, of course, spend a lot of time there painting or taking photos or making sketches and notes for subjects I can paint when I get home. I’ve become friends with an American who now lives in San Miguel named Frank Gardner. Frank is a wonderful painter—he has a blog here and a website www.frankgardner.com. Take a visit to his site if you want to get a real flavor of this part of Mexico. He also has a gallery in town under his own name. I’ve studied with Frank quite a bit and learned a lot from him.

The painting here is of San Miguel. It is called “Straw Man on Relox.” Relox is a street near the center of town that is usually much busier than shown. One of the “retailers” I mentioned is this hombre who sells straw items. He loads himself with baskets, hats, totes on every arm, hand, fingers–so much so you can hardly tell he’s there–just a mound of straw with feet. The street is typical of the side streets in the downtown area, but I used only a few figures so as not to lose the focus on the Straw Man. During the day the streets are usually crowded with vendors, shoppers and tourists. At the height of the day, the light is very bold and bright and even the shade side of the street gets light reflected from the street and the buildings opposite. I have dozens of paintings of Mexico, but I just want you to get a taste here of the town. Frank has many wonderful landscapes and settings that show the countryside as well as the town.

If San Miguel is beginning to appeal to you, visit www.portalsanmiguel.com. For more info. From the northeast we go through Houston to the city of Leon which is an hour and a half drive from SMA. Most people take the shuttle from the airport to the town. It is a fascinating ride through high desert and grasslands. And San Miguel will not disappoint, I promise you.

Winter in Maine–an Artist’s View
It was a long time before I realized what potential the bleak, gray winters of Maine had for an artist who lives here. It’s way to cold to go out and paint sketches on site and though I do get out for at least a walk daily in winter, I didn’t often see much that inspired me artistically.
Well, I was wrong. The more I studied painting and the more I exchanged thoughts and ideas with other artists, the more I woke up to the treasure trove of goodies laying on the snow, in the low, slanting light, in the expressive bare limbs of the trees. Now the problem was to develop a method of capturing all of this on canvas.
I have an artist friend who paints out of doors all year long in Maine. He has a 60s vintage VW bus that he has set up with a heater inside. He’ll go to a site, set up his easel and paint until he gets cold. He then repairs to the bus, turns on the heat and warms up. Sometimes it’s every few minutes. Now that’s devotion! I don’t have a VW bus or anything like it, but as I said, I do get out and have since learned to spot paintable things and scenes. When I do, I take several photos and try to totally absorb what I see–even making a few notes. I find that I have a pretty good memory for images which helps. When I get back to the studio, I put the images in my computer, do a bit of PhotoShop and then do some quick sketches on a canvas, including color notes of what I remember.
I should point out that I use the photos only for reference and positioning of items in the piece. How to use photos in painting is another piece altogether, but I quickly put the photos away. I pretend that I am doing an on-site sketch and start painting as if I had the same time pressure as I would plein air. This helps me deal with color masses and values quickly, saving details until later. I also find that imagination quickly kicks in and I’m able to take my image memories into a more "artistic" realm. When I finish the painting a few days later, I compare it with the photo. The human eye coupled with the brain is infinitely more powerful than the camera! (Not to demean the art of photography, which in its way is just as challenging as painting).
Here are a couple of paintings I did in recent weeks. The lighthouse is Portland Headlight which stands on a point in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. It’s a couple of miles from where I live. It has been painted and photographed thousands of times by thousands of people. I’ve painted it a few times myself, but I try to find an uncommon view, so it’s not just another "lighthouse painting." This day had new fallen snow followed by brilliant sunshine. I saw a spot on a little bluff that had birches in front of it. In one of those "aha" moments, I trudged up and saw this scene. A couple of photos and a few moments of study later, I had it. The sun was blinding on the snow, so the camera didn’t "see" much, but I did, adding colors in the snow providing an atmospheric perspective. I also intensified some colors to pump up the image of the lighthouse which should be the focus of the piece. I also pumped up the white in the birches, inspiring the name, "White on White."
The second picture is a mile down the road from the first, a marsh that most people don’t even see because on the other side of the road is the ocean, often spectacular with roiling waves and distant ships. It was late in the afternoon with long shadows and that brilliant gold white light we have in winter when the sun is receding. I used the same technique as before, but I changed the composition substantially, isolating that crooked tree and simplifying the background. I call it "Pond Cove Marsh in Winter" to distinguish it from another painting I did of the marsh in fall. You can see it and some other pieces on the site fineartamerica.com/jack-riddle.