Familiar landscapes

Of all media, I find watercolor paintings the most challenging. Their marvelous clarity escapes me as, time after time, I create puddles of muddy color.

Ana Rosa Navarro also struggled with the medium, and now dominates it with absolute authority.

Her subjects are familiar landscapes in west central Mexico where we both live. Tapalpa's pine forests. Puerto Vallarta's plazas and palm trees. Adobe homes, stone bridges and terracotta pots in flower-filled patios.

She captures the soul of this land and its people.

Anticipation

My training in art and writing was traditional. We first mastered figure drawing, foreshortening and perspective before being permitted to paint abstractions. Painting was a craft, not child's play.

Perhaps that's why I tend to collect abstract paintings. I envy their fluidity, their spontaneity. They capture my imagination. Or perhaps, as T. S. Eliot said, "…human kind cannot bear very much reality."*

(Click on pic for large view)
The pre-Hispanic icons in Alberto Ramos' work convey primal messages. I love the luminosity he brings to his paintings. Revelation is imminent; omens are everywhere. He creates a sense of anticipation in every work.

*T. S. Eliot in Burnt Norton I from Four Quartets, 1944

Rocking chairs

The daughter of German immigrants, Grandmother was born in the Midwest in 1890.   She was a thinker, a mystic, a suffragette, a poetess.   An amazing woman, she marched to her own drummer.   Science, literature, organic gardening, theology… she was curious about everything.

She believed that the universe is ruled by rhythms.   Day that fades to night and reawakens to light.   The rotating seasons.   High tide and low tide and ocean waves washing to shore.   Our beating hearts, our breath.   The rhythmic ecstasy of making love.

I remember her in a rocking chair as she told us stories.   Her silver crochet hook flashed in and out, in and out, as the chair moved quietly in unison.

Years later in Yucatan, I loved sleeping in a hammock, swaying to the sound of the Caribbean.   Moonlight on the deck of a sailboat creaking back and forth at anchor.   Rocking my babies, damp and sleepy and smelling of shampoo.

A vital piece of furniture, the rocking chair's rhythmic movements are deeply familiar.   A rocking chair brings comfort and peace.   It invites reverie.   It feels like home.

So wrong

When I was expecting our first child, I bought some beautiful handloomed rugs from Oaxaca.

"The baby can crawl here, and play with her toys," I reasoned.   "I can send them out to clean. Besides, they're absolutely beautiful."

I'd been looking for an excuse for years.

I began searching in shops and markets for just the right choice.   Then voila!   One Sunday in Ajijic, I met Gregorio Ruiz from Teotitlan del Valle, selling rugs on the street.   His family carries on the weaving tradition, shearing their own sheep, spinning the yarn and dying it with natural colors.   Each piece is superbly woven.   And I prefer buying from the artisan rather than stores.

Armed with two new Zapotec area rugs, I awaited my "daughter's" birth.

I was so wrong.

My first child, David, is not a girl.

And he did not crawl neatly on the rugs, but struck out swiftly for cold tile floors and soon made the patio part of his crawling track.

Oh well.   Live and learn.

Cold floors

Wall-to-wall carpets are delightful for padding barefoot through the house on a cold evening.   But I really prefer something I can pick up and clean beneath.

The solution?   Area rugs.


For years I used handwoven Mexican wool rugs from Queretaro and Michoacan.   As I grew older, my choices became more classic ones.   Currently, a copy of a Persian carpet in deep, rich blue takes pride of place.

There's a world of beautiful area rugs at Novica, from Indian dhurries to Brazilian sisal to rattan and banana bark.   Something for every space I could ever create.   What fun!

Fashionista

In grammar school, a patent leather clutch held a comb and white gloves for Sunday School. In junior high, a shoulder bag was all I needed. A sisal market bag from Merida became my college briefcase.


Later on, a sling tote for the beach was a different kind of diaper bag. Today I tuck the laptop in a canvas morral.

Ah, handbags! I love them all, from my Balinese mahogany and tree bark purse to the sleek black shoulder bag from Spain. A beaded Huichol change purse and a hand-embroidered wallet from Guatemala. Evening bags from India and summer whites.

Novica has a bag for each pair of shoes and every occasion. They're my downfall.

Born of necessity

Where are my keys? And the cell phone? Surely I have a hairbrush in here and some lipstick. I need these things! A handful of business cards too, sunglasses and the checkbook….

Somehow, stuff outgrew the space in my pockets. I look lumpy and dumpy. I need a purse!

It's anthropological, isn't it? Even prehistoric people carried flints in leather pouches.