Please forgive me, but it's not for without reason. You see, I am married to a San Francisco Giants fan, and by default I am a SF Giants fan. I have always liked baseball and support my teams on the bay, Oakland A's holla! (okay I never really ever say 'holla') but not to the extreme that I have been brought into that past six years. Giants fever baby. The past few weeks have been torture as we fought to win the West. But we did it. We beat the Friars. Celebration and good times kept me from the canvas.
Okay, so Giants are not to blame for my lack of posting. I have also had technical issues with BOTH of the computers I use. I have a Dell desktop and home, which is a POC (blue screen of death) and a Dell desktop at work which inexplicably decided to stop working for several days. And it's the only computer that connects to the internet at work. And being the secretarial assistant/engineer/"computer geek" (i know more about computers than my father, hence the reason I am a geek, but know even less about computers to ask the tech support guy what the heck is the Motherboard) I was designating with fixing it.
Cue crickets chirping.
Anyways, long story short. Computer dead. 6+ hours on Dell's evil tech support phone line over 2 days equals seventh ring of Hell. I'd rather sit in Dodgers stadium wearing full on Giants gear (hopefully under the protection of my Dodger loving cousin) than have to deal with Dell tech support, all the transferring and the reexplaining of the issue, and their technicians some of which are called Baby and Bobby. After three days of dealing with it and the rude technician that came out to replace hard drive and motherboard, I needed a drink. The following week was spent with me trying to install the freaking system.
Now we're back up and running and I can post about what's been going on. Easily, not much. Work, Giants games and painting have consumed most of my life so I haven't had time nor the creative energy to channel into writing at this time. Actually, all my creative thought and actions have been put into my artwork.
You see, I am working on a series of paintings for Dias de los Muertos.
The skeletons dancing is by artist Carlos Vellez. On the back of the post card is the information with my drawing on it. Yes, the drawing is very sketchy. I only had one week to come up with concept promotional artwork for the show in the midst of planning my wedding.
I squealed with delight when I was offered this opportunity. I am so excited and honored to be able to paint artwork for something that belongs to my heritage. I have been building ofrendas to my departed loved ones for a while now and couldn't wait to offer my art.
Here are some other images of what I came up with:
I love love love floral embroaidery, especially on dresses, and coming from a Hungarian Mexican background I was all over the bright colors of the flowers.
Mariachi guitarist with his beautiful undead senorita.
Kiss from a rose on a grave..... hahahaha. Sorry. Now I have the song in my head.
La Madonna. I got more of her on grander scale and in paint!
Sorry for the poor quality of the images. So far even thing has been taken with my camera phone. Also, it was my first time working with markers like this. I generally work with pencil and paint.
Luckily the event is on October 30th. So since having to do the promotional work, I got married, took a 2 week honeymoon and came home to work on another show (not day of the dead) so once that other show finished I could finally get to work on my Muerto paintings.
Here are some of the paintings that I am currently working on:
La Catrina. Made famous by the etching by Jose Guadalupe Posada. She is the "skeleton of high society woman" Not quite finished. I need to define her skeleton and work more on her hat.
I work a lot with the female form so moving from full bodied women to calaveras is some what difficult but exciting for me.
Obviously still a work in progress. Long way to go but I am enjoying it. Detail the bones, detail the flowers detail detail detail.
This is my first time painting on wood. Not quite sure how I feel about it, but once the painting is complete I'll let you know what I think.
When I first started sketching ideas for Dios de los Muertos, I didn't want to go completely down the skeleton route. I wanted to keep the female form in my work. I also thought of the history of the day. It wasn't just a day, it was a whole season celebration marking the fall harvest along with honoring the dead. It was also brought to light by the arrival of the monarch butterfly.
Butterflies and hummingbirds were thought to be the spirits of departed loved ones, so butterflies make a big appearance in my work right now.
I also love masks.
(Yes the first picture of me on this blog is with my husband and a butterfly mask. Sand City 50th anniversary. We look good for 50 years together. Lol)
Butterfly masks were my first thought to do for paintings, but then I didn't want to go overboard with the little insects (like the above) so I also decided to work on the death masks, or skull masks, like on the Catrina above.
So yes, I still got a long ways to go and I have soooooooo many things planned. Like a painting of Santa Muerte, Mictlantecihuatl, more butterflies, familia, lilies, marigolds, calveras, owls, snakes. . . anything to do with Dias de los Muertos I am on it!
I am stressed for time, but happy. I love what I am doing and wish I could do so much more. I just don't want to rush. I want to make beautiful quality work that will last.
Hope you enjoyed this sneak peek into my work. And hopefully I will see some of you at the festival!
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