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Alvaro and I both paint out of the paint itself. After putting on an undercoat of random, or not so random, colors, we each then move with the paint’s suggestions to find our subject matter. I usually use up whatever paint is left over from a previous painting; Alvaro just starts with paint out of his tubes, mixed right on the brush, and put on in free strokes. In some way, each of us is accessing intuition to lead us into the painting.

West Indies Girl was painted in March of this year in Todos Santos, Mexico where we stayed and worked for three months. The painting would have begun as explained above and perhaps the head was first a sun above a horizon, then, as black was applied in other parts of the canvas, the face seemed a logical substitute and so the figure was born, the body loose and free and almost falling away into nothing toward the lower half of the canvas.

The Seamstress contains not only the energy and presence of the wind, but the balletic pose and elegance of the figure both of which balance the painting’s surface and field. The colors also are balanced, but with an intuitive force rather than a thought-out plan. Like Alvaro, I approach the canvas with my own blankness, entering what begins to appear and drawing it out. I might have some idea that I’m thinking of a figure rather than a landscape, say, but, other than that it is all wide open. That’s what gives the painting its spontaneity and life force, and what makes painting for me such a great delight.

The Cuban Dancer exploits Latin rhythms to create a figure that is both elegant and flamboyant. The expanse of blue speaks for the sea, and the sun has ended black in tune with the African background of the dancer. Basic to the painting is a dynamic use of feminine curves everywhere except for the horizon, the only masculine entity (which partially penetrates the waistline of the figure). (Alvaro himself writing.)

This woman appeared in the underpaint, as have so many others of my figures in the past couple of years. Of course I am looking, but I don’t force them up out of the paint. When I looked closely at  a darker spot where the face now is, that is what I saw and simply pulled out, the face that you see here. I was not trying for a black, nor a Caribbean woman, but, not only the face, but the rhythmn of the body, the dress, the arms, all suggested both black and Caribbean. I added, on my own, the boyfriend/husband in the distance, hands so familiarly on the hips as he waits for her to say her final good-byes! How many of us women have seen our husbands out by the car, in front of the store or at the door of a house waiting like that? I couldn’t resist. And the painting needed another focal point beyond her. I love this woman, her energy and confidence.

Tula, the female, at 2 months old the end of April, and her brother, Chocho on their first day with us at home in Truchas. Tula came with two heart defects, one inoperable, which meant we have had to keep them separated, as Chocho, hale, hearty and bulldoggy in all ways, could cause her demise simply by playing normally with her. We didn’t know the extent of her problem until a week after getting the two, but did know she had breathing difficulties. We fell for her anyway and hope we can give her a happy, if short, life. Seeing them, perhaps all of you who have visited over the past few months can understand why blogging kind of disappeared from my mind! Here they are now, still keeping us very occupied, but a little calmer and less demanding.

And painting? Well, we’re both just getting back into our studios, Alvaro painting more small birds which fly away almost as fast as he can paint them, and me, revisiting the landscape of New Mexico, particularly around Truchas. I’ll be writing more often now and will continue with the comparison of our figure paintings. Tula and Chocho are English bulldogs, just in case you didn’t realize that, and, for those of you who don’t know us, they are the third pair we’ve had over the last 35 years. They are a joy, at least most of the time.

AN INTRODUCTION

Our website, www.cardonahinegallery.com, makes our artwork available for viewing and purchasing. I’d like this blog to tend to other matters of art, some general, such as– what’s the bottom line for anyone in purchasing a work of art; some more personal to myself and Alvaro, such as how each of us approaches a particular painting, that sort of thing. I would like to have more of a dialogue here than anything else. So feel free to comment, question, dispute.

In Mexico this past winter, we both painted the human figure. There are many differences in the way we each apprehend and present the figure. Let’s have a look at one from each of us.

My painting, Woman Rising, is on the left, Alvaro’s Sea Goddess below .  One can immediately see that the approach to both subject and palette is totally different. Woman Rising is a more intimate portrait (albeit of no one in particular); Sea Goddess is contained, formal, the figure representing something larger than an individual.

What I can say about my interest in the human figure is that I am moved by the gestures we make as human beings, gestures that unconsciously reveal us; in the case of this particular woman a shyness, a ducking of the head and torso in order to ingratiate or please, a gesture that also suggests coquettishness. I like to capture the psychology of the figure, the persona we would wish we were revealing, in this case, humility and good manners, but which catch us as we really are and which anyone can see.

Sea Goddess expresses a more fundamental or archetypal view of the human figure and harks back to a whole history of representing the human figure as larger than our individual lives. The effect is formal, even distancing, the palette deeply subtle compared to the bright, contrasting, elementary colors used in Woman Rising. Cardona-Hine is aiming at something in us that he would say is our essential nature; we ARE gods and goddesses; we ARE larger than what we present ourselves as being.

Alvaro and I are two artists living together for over 40 years, in the same space, with our individual views, our specific foci. The only way to be. Have a great evening.

Barbara

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