Art in the Room

When I showed you a couple of photos of my renovated spare bedroom, the paintings had not yet been hung on the walls.  It's not surprising, given my love of Mexico and my frequent trips there, that most of my artwork is from that country or is at least of a Mexican theme.

Some of the pictures were hanging in the room before I did the renovation.

I have had these two small pictures from Mexico for a long, long time.  They were created from different colors of toothpicks.

In this detail of one of them you can see more clearly how they are made from toothpicks.

I bought this painting back in the 80s on a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico.  Outside the archaeological site of Mitla, an artist was selling his work.  I thought that this was a nice example of folk art.  It is signed Isidro Salvador de la Cruz.  I tried googling his name a few days ago, and I found nothing about him.  So I guess that he never became famous and that the painting's value has not sky-rocketed.  That's OK.  I still like it and enjoy looking at its whimsical details.

This is one of my paintings.  It is a picture of the baroque, 17th century church of San Francisco Javier in Tepotzotlán, Mexico.  I painted this for my high school Spanish teacher.  We remained good friends through the years, and she was like an adopted mother to me.  When she went into a nursing home I did this picture for her to hang in her room.  She passed away in 2005, and I brought the painting home.

   I did this painting in 2001.  It is of the tiled domes of a colonial church in Tlaxcala , Mexico.

This little image of the Virgen of Guadalupe on a piece of hand-hammered copper was given to me by my friend Irma.  Irma is originally from Mexico, and one of her relatives would make these pictures.

I had a number of original pieces of art that had been sitting in a closet for years.  This year I finally took them to a professional picture framer, and I have hung them in the room.  I photographed them sitting on the sofa so that there would be less reflection from the glass.

This print, which is entitled "The Rainbow Serpent", was given to me by my friend and former teaching colleague Carol.  The work was done by an Ohio artist by the name of Marie Lim.  Sadly in 2012 Lim was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, and she no longer remembers her career as an artist. 

I had to do some research, and I found out that the Rainbow Serpent (or Aido Hwedo) is part of West African and Haitian mythology.  It does, however, have a certain Mexican look to it (think of the feathered serpent of pre-Hispanic mythology), and it fits in with the theme of the rest of the artwork. 

Back in 2010 I bought a couple more paintings on another trip to Oaxaca.  Finally they are hanging on my wall.

This watercolor shows a village scene in Oaxaca.  The artist signed his name as "Méndez C."

 

Finally, this oil painting of the Zócalo, or main plaza of the city of Oaxaca, is by a painted by an artist by the name of (if I am reading his signature correctly) Rodolfo Leguna.