Clockwise from above:
Little Red Riding Hood and Falling Man, archival pigment print, 2007; Portrait of Mexican General Aldama with Decorative Scroll, acrylic on paper, 2008; Dancer, acrylic on paper, 2007 |
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.
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Vocabulary Game, archival pigment print, 2007.
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Street Argument, acrylic on paper, 2008.
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Left: Stage Coach Robbery, Doubled, acrylic on paper, 2007.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery 
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 Just A Cigar, archival pigment print, 2016
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Left: Skull Enlivened By Stripes, archival pigment print, 2014. Above: I was A Teeny-Bopper for Diego Rivera, pigment print and acrylic, 2014.
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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. |
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Mayans Surprised by Cezanne Amazons, (after Rivera), archival pigment print, 2014.
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