SPANISH LESSONS

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Clockwise from above:
Little Red Riding Hood and Falling Man, pigment print,
2007; Dancer, acrylic on paper, 2007;  Street Spanish Vocabulary Lesson,  archival pigment print and collage, 2007;  Still Life with French Fries and Shot Man, acrylic and collage on paper, 2008; Portrait of the Mexican General Aldama with Decorative Scroll,  acrylic on paper, 2008.

The series Spanish Lesson was begun in Mexico in 2007, first as a group of pigment prints that were  followed by acrylic on paper paintings using similar -- or sometimes identical -- themes.  My basic tactic was to combine  images gleaned from wall decorations, folk crafts and other  Mexican  vernacular art with cartoons found in an old Spanish language book along with  manipulated sections from the prints of the great Mexican satirist Jose Guadalupe Posada. I sought combinations that would set up clashes between humorous or plainly ludicrous situations and scenes of discomfort or distress if not outright horror. Decorative frames, overlays of  shapes and other abstract devices  were used as foils for somber or distressed subject matter.

              Vocabulary Game, archival pigment print, 2007.

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       Street Argument, acrylic on paper, 2008.

Left:  Stage Coach Robbery, Doubled, acrylic on paper, 2007.

 Albright-Knox Art Gallery

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Falling Star with Barbed Wire, archival pigment print, 2014.

RE-MIXico (2014) was a follow-up to the earlier series Spanish Lesson. In RE-MIXico I  extended the Mexican themes by adding mask imagery,  photographs and, in a few cases, lettering.  Some pieces, particularly the cartoon-based ones, were reapplications of ideas that I had first developed in 2007.  The drawings and watercolors of Diego Rivera, in partial or manipulated form, were incorporated into a number of compositions and combined with  such things as photographic nudes, and manipulated sections taken from my other, unrelated paintings.

Bad Christmas, acrylic on paper, 2007.

                                                      Sometimes A Cigar Is A Cigar,  pigment print, 2014 ,                                                                                                                                        .

Left: Skull Enlivened By Stripes, archival pigment print, 2014. Above: I was A Teeny-Bopper for Diego Rivera, pigment print and acrylic, 2014.

                                                                    Mexican Angel In Early America, archival pigment print, 2014.

Above: Hermano With Rivera Drawing, archival pigment print, 2013-14.
Right: Boy With Corn Insignia by Rivera and Airplane, archival pigment print, 2014.

  Mayans Surprised by Cezanne Amazons, (after Rivera), archival pigment print, 2014.