JOHN FULTON, A RENAISSANCE MAN

GALERIA IZAMAL ARTIST

PODCASTS ABOUT COLLECTIONS & CONNECTIONS : PODCAST #88: THE ART OF MATADOR JOHN FULTON, WITH BRITT ZAIST

 JOHN FULTON, A RENAISSANCE MAN

By Britt Zaist

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RAY HERRERA-LEGUIZAMO

GALERIA IZAMAL GUEST ARTIST

The cold does not exist, it is only the absence of heat.

Just for this new delivery to Galeria Izamal Gallery, I present this pair of works in which I insist on working with lyrical geometry and a theme that has seduced me for some time. It is a bit illogical living in such a mild and temperate climate as the one we have here in San Miguel. This motif began with a deliberation about the cold and how to evoke it. So it was that after reflections, pentimenti, erasures and amendments, scaffolding of lines and bands, overlapping planes and atmospheric veils of color through which layers of activity can be perceived, I found myself sailing the Endurance towards the ice floes. I also felt the icy wind in Marie Byrd's desert and the loneliness of Amundsen... And you may ask me, what does all this have to do with a painter living in San Miguel de Allende? Well, just the freedom that you find in this profession wherever you are. With painting you can go anywhere and stay there as long as you want. You can even die or be born at will while squinting your eyes and wielding a brush impregnated with color. The challenge is to take others, those who look at your work, to these places and make it a common experience and then have a subject to talk about. The strength and curiosity of my painting also involves the contradiction inherent in the idea that indecision, conflict and tinkering could become the essence of a story that can be conveyed. The power of the gaze is enough when you close your eyes and then, enjoy the cold in this sunny land.

By Ray Herrera-Leguizamo

Versión en Español

El frío no existe, solo es ausencia de calor.

Justo para esta nueva entrega a Galería Izamal, presento este par de obras en las que insisto en trabajar con la geometría lírica y un tema que me seduce desde hace tiempo. Un tanto ilógico viviendo un clima tan benigno y templado como el que tenemos aquí en San Miguel. Este motivo inició con una deliberación en torno al frío y como evocarlo. Fue así que después de reflexiones, pentimenti, borrados y enmiendas, andamios de líneas y bandas, planos superpuestos y velos atmosféricos de color a través de los cuales se pueden percibir capas de actividad, me encontré navegando en el Endurance rumbo a los témpanos de hielo. También sentí el gélido viento en el desierto de Marie Byrd y la soledad de Amundsen... Y me podrás preguntar, ¿que tiene que ver todo esto con un pintor viviendo en San Miguel de Allende? Pues justo la libertad que encuentras en este oficio estés donde estés. Con la pintura puedes ir a cualquier lugar y estar ahí el tiempo que quieras. Incluso puedes morir o nacer a placer mientras entrecierras los ojos y empuñas un pincel impregnado de color. El reto es llevar a otros, los que te miran, a estos lugares y hacerlo una experiencia en común para luego tener tema de charla. La fuerza y la curiosidad de mi pintura también involucran la contradicción inherente a la idea de que la indecisión, el conflicto y los retoques podrían convertirse en la esencia de una historia que se puede trasmitir. Basta el poder de la mirada cuando cierras los ojos y pues, disfruten el frío en esta soleada tierra.

 por Ray Herrera-Leguizamo

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ELVIA SAMANIEGO 

GALERIA IZAMAL GUEST ARTIST

Welcome to the September newsletter of Galeria Izamal! As you may know, we now feature two excellent artists who have been established in SMA only two years: Elvia Samaniego and her partner Ray Herrera- Leguizamo, whom Elvia describes as "the eccentric Ray". I think you'll enjoy the bio Elvia has written, along with some of her wonderful paintings.

¡Bienvenidos al Newsletter de Septiembre de Galeria Izamal!  Como algunos ya sabrán, ahora presentamos a dos excelentes artistas quienes llevan en San Miguel de Allende solo dos años: Elvia Samaniego y su pareja Ray Herrera-Leguizamo, a quien Elvia describe como "el excéntrico Ray". Creemos que disfrutará de la breve biografía que Elvia ha escrito, junto con algunas de sus maravillosas pinturas.

From the beginning, my life has been an adventure. I was born a twin in the City of Chicago, Illinois; but, grew up in the desert near the Juarez border in Chihuahua. I knew from my earliest years that I loved to paint and express my fascination with the world. Like many of my generation, I believed the story that artists starve to death and decided to study architecture. However, for the last 5 years I have been painting full time. I worked for several years in museums in Mexico City as assistant director of architecture at the National Museum of Art and the Palace of Fine Arts. When I had time, I would spend it going through the exhibition halls looking at the art in Goya, Velázquez, El Greco, Sorolla, Munch, Lautrec, Picasso, O'Keeffe, Bourgeois.... Living with these masters inspired me to continue my path in the world of painting. It was in 2017 when my life partner, eccentric painter Ray Herrera-Leguizamo and our little daughter Ximena, decided to leave the great city of Mexico and go north, an adventure that took us to the Mennonite lands of Chihuahua. The idea was to paint and become full time artists. The scenery was spectacular and the colors of the sky captured our imagination as well as the textures of the earth, the ethereal sunrises and the taste of the food. The wind and rain accompanied my efforts to capture the essence of it all and understand my place in the universe as an artist and a woman. At the same time, I opened my mind and heart to new subjects to paint. The biggest challenge was working in winter because the snow and cold limited my ability to move freely in the studio. Another obstacle was integrating and being visible to the people where I lived, as Mennonites are not very open to outsiders and people of other faiths. The language turned out to be a bridge, and the children with their huge blue eyes and their curiosity offered to teach me Plattdeutsch (Low German) in exchange for painting with me, so I discovered that the innocence of childhood was universal.

Some time later came another new change, living in San Miguel de Allende and so in February 2020 we opened an art gallery with a lot of hopes but without knowing that it would only last a month due to the pandemic. However, we persevered and we fought through the bad times and even now we keep that gallery, Galeria San Antonio (next to the San Antonio Church). Shortly after that we set up the painting workshop on the outskirts of San Miguel in a beautiful place that forced us to look at it all the time due to the spectacular scenery. It was there that I experimented with different techniques and framing, trying out more and more personal themes, such as the origin of imagination, human exodus, gender introspection and its confrontation with reality.

Once settled in San Miguel, our intention was to get to know the community of active artists and that is how I got to know Galeria Izamal. The first time I entered, a woman with large and expressive eyes greeted me kindly and invited me to see her work. I immediately identified with her, her drawings were of animals and characters beautifully expressed with agile, almost minimalist lines. She was Britt Zaist, the first artist I met, along with the talented painter Henry Vermillion, both have been instrumental in my development. As a result of these years of intense work, my work has successfully managed to be present in Cuba, Mexico, United States, Germany and Spain. I was selected to be in FIGURATIVAS 2021 in the city of Barcelona and I am now, as a finalist in the III Bienal del Abierto Lumen 2022.

Currently, my work reflects the inspiration of a look and its power to bridge the differences between people. I look for themes that raise awareness to those who look at my painting about the great challenges of minorities and all that we need to understand about the world in which we all coexist. My art is contemporary because I deal with themes of my time and I am an artist of my time.

VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL

BOYSTOWN

A SHOW OF PAINTINGS BY HENRY VERMILLION

THE OLDEST PROFESSION - PAINTINGS FROM BOYSTOWN

By Henry Vermillion

A man walks into a bar and sits down at a table. (Sounds like Henny Youngman back in the old days?) A woman comes over and sits down. “Hi, Cowboy,” she says. “Buy me a drink?” And so on…

Behind those clichés and others like them lie a thousand jokes, tall tales and, of course, real life stories. A dozen or so of them are suggested by the new paintings at the Galeria San Antonio,( located on one side of the Parrochia San Antonio) in a show called “Boystown”. The show opens Friday, August 19, 5 to 9 pm. (Some of the preliminary studies for these pictures can still be seen at the drawing show currently up at the Blue Moon Gallery at Calzada de la Estación #151.)

The works are based on old souvenir photographs taken by house photographers in clubs in “Zonas de Tolerancia” or Red- Light Districts in Mexican border towns, where prostitution is legal, and is largely supported by visiting cowboys, college students, and other American men. While I had known about these places a long time ago, when I years later came across a collection of these souvenir photos, I was struck by how funny many were, how sad some were, how foolish, and how human they all were. I began to draw, and then to paint these folks. One picture led to another. Political correctness had no home here. Good old boys came to dance, drink, and have a good old time, to get away from the small -town strictures they grew up and lived with. For some young men, it was a rite of passage, as in one of the paintings in the show. For others, single or married, it was for uncomplicated sex.

For the women, the story is more complex. Some certainly seem to be having a good time---maybe they have learned to be good actresses---some are posing like cinema stars, some seem bored, and some are hard to read. And some of the women had children to take care of in those tough situations, and yet did what they needed to do.

The show will remain up through Friday, September 2.

BOYSTOWN: AN ART EXHIBIT BY HENRY VERMILLION

By Stanley Klein

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A SHOW OF DRAWINGS AT GALERIA BLUE MOON

by Henry Vermillion

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PAINTERS RAY HERRERA-LEGUIZAMO AND ELVIA SAMANIEGO ON GALERIA IZAMAL‘S WEBSITE

By Henry Vermillion

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Elvia and Ray are two outstanding San Miguel painters we are privileged to feature on our Galeria Izamal website.

Ray is a native of Mexico City. He studied at the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes there and at the Prattt Institute in New York. He has worked as illustrator and editor for various publications in Mexico and has been featured in many exhibitions in Mexico. He currently is working on a broad series of abstract/landscapes, as well as unique figure drawings.

The abstract/landscapes are beautifully painted; they read as powerful and bold abstracts until you read the title and look more closely. “Little Antoine’s Grave” is a landscape in that at the top is the sky, with two blue lines of mountains on the horizon. Below the mid line of the picture are indications of cubical, sharp-edged blocks of huge stones or buildings. The wrecked tail section of an old single—engine airplane juts up from between these blocks. The airplane tail section has white and red stripes neatly painted on it.

What can we make of this? The title is a clue. “Little Antoine´s Grave”.…Antoine de Saint Exupery was the famous author of “The Little Prince”, and he died when his light plane crashed in the desert mountains of North Africa.

Other strange and mysterious clues appear in other of his landscapes: bridges to nowhere, a soccer field, dormant or active volcanic cones, fences.

The entire series is painted in broad, bold strokes and handsome but limited colors, with suggestions of structures not finished, something like the strange surrealist constructions built in the mountain forest near Xilitla, San Luis Potosi by the Englishman Edward James.

When I first saw Ray´s figure drawings, I was astonished. He has a natural and rare facility to draw figures, hands, faces, each from different angles and positions, all from memory and imagination. And his people aren´t the idealized advertising types we all grew up with and see in the media every day. They´re gritty folk with obviously human frailties. Men and women leaning on each other, seated, sexual tension clear in some, expressions passive, resigned—all these people are almost too human to look at, but they make a unique personal punch that stays with you.

Elvia Samaniego, Ray´s wife, also does landscapes, but is most noted for her magical super realist painting of faces, especially those of children and young people. She has exhibited in juried competitions in Barcelona, Spain, in Cuba, and in the United States, and has won many awards. Children peek out at us through holes in fences, through panes of glass—both dripping with rain and clear---and underwater, both in diving helmets and holding their breath and blowing bubbles. Another girl is seated on a narrow rail, smiling, while on either side gymnasts the size of the girl’s nose are doing handstands on the rail while another fairy-size sprite leaps across the girl´s folded arms. In another painting, a monkey peers at us while perched on the armrest of an empty wheelchair. Other landscapes show the harm we humans do to the environment; and, still another landscape series “In Her Shoes” chronicles the passage of time in a woman´s life.

Elvia´s painted world is beautifully accomplished and is full of subtle whimsey and charm.

CLOSE LOOKING

- Part Two -

BY HENRY VERMILLION

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¨How to Draw a Face¨ is a piece I made for my own pleasure, and it´s made for close looking. It´s a collection of drawings of artists and styles I´ve admired and learned from over time. The top six sheets show the standard academic steps art students, at least in the past, used to learn how to draw any adult human face from the front. Below, the rest of the canvas is covered by a mosaic of faces by artists who often bent or broke the rules above in various expressive ways.

Drawings of five artist’s faces are among them: Daumier (#1), Pascin (#2), Picasso (#3), Schiele (#4), and Francis Bacon (#5).

Two of Daumier´s drawings are included, along with four by Picasso, three by the Mexican Jose Luis Cuevas, (#6 and two others), a horrific one by Goya (#7) showing the god Cronos eating one of his children, four by the political caricaturist Steve Brodner (#8, #9, and two others) and one each by the San Miguel artists Juan Ezcurdia (#10) and Ray Herrera (#11).

On the bottom right side are four imaginative faces by the Spanish painter Gerardo Cantu (#16) which I copied from a museum in Madrid. Most of the remaining drawings are mine, including the big gray face in the center and the large face to the right, which I took from a photo of Charlie Watts, the late Rolling Stones drummer (#17).

A look at Picasso´s image recalls his beginnings as a traditional 19th century painter who became such a multifaceted wizard that he changed the course of art in the 20th century, and so on with each of the dozen or so other artists whose faces or work is pasted onto the underlying canvas. (The canvas shows the remains of a large green landscape I could never get to work.) And, finally, there are dozens of other collages that could be made of other good, interesting or important artists…

CLOSE LOOKING

- Part One -

by Henry Vermillion

The painter Ed Osman was one of the original members of our gallery when we opened in 2001 in the patio courtyard of the old Meson de San Jose on Calle Mesones. Ed would sit with his coffee and newspaper at a table in the patio when it was his day to work the gallery. “Ed! We´ve got a desk inside; you´re supposed to be in there! What if somebody wants to buy something?” “I can tell who´ll buy something,” he would say. He couldn´t be persuaded. And he was usually right. If the person lingered inside longer than five minutes, he or she was a real prospect, and Ed got up, and he often sold something.

His plan makes sense. Most gallery-goers absorb all the culture they want that day by making a quick pass around and then out. A small fraction, however will pause to actually look at a painting, look more closely, and then wonder about the piece. Is it skillfully painted? If not, was that on purpose? Who´s the artist? And, of course, the price. (Granted, there are those---women, usually, may I say it—who turn to their spouse: “What do you think, George? I think this matches the drapes.”) By close looking, I mean wondering why the painter painted a face green? Does the painting suggest a story? What is it that makes the picture interesting or different? This is close looking.

I recently read a review of an early painting by Jasper Johns—perhaps the first of the many that he did of the subject. At the bottom of the painting, the reviewer found faintly lettered words which had been painted over and were not clearly visible to the casual viewer (I didn´t notice them at all). As I recall, the words painted over were “hate” and “no”, or others equally negative. The reviewer pointed out that the painting was done soon after Johns had been dumped and betrayed by his friend and lover Robert Rauschenberg. Johns was angry and anguished, as might be expected, but over the words, he painted, of all things, an American flag.

I´m not a fan of Jasper John´s work. Like some other painters, I have wondered what the fuss was about. But by closely reading the picture and by fleshing out the events of the painter´s life at the time, the painting becomes at least more sympathetic. But why an American flag? Two (or maybe more) good reasons come to mind. First, the obvious: any therapist will advise an aggrieved or suffering person to not dwell on the pain. Get your mind on other things, do something different. And, painting a rough image of the flag seems innocuous, but was also a bit audacious, after all, in the contemporary big city art scene of the day. Secondly, he correctly sensed that the poohbahs in charge of the New York art scene were ready for change. The macho, let-it-all-hang-out Abstract Expressionists had run their course; it was time for something new. Why not something more quiet, more banal (with a wink), more reserved? And third, I suspect that Johns was not the kind of painter who could invent new and different means to express his feelings, as did, say, artists such as Pollock, Francis Bacon, or of course, Picasso. Johns painted to impress a coterie of New York poets and critics, and he won his bet. The time was right.

So, thanks to the critic/reviewer who wrote the article. A good job. He read the picture closely and filled in the necessary background. And, like it or not, the American flag rouses childhood memories of security and pride of country in most of us Americans. Better than another top-of-the-voice expression of personal problems, eh?

To sum up: serious art deserves a close look. Figure out why or how the artist made this interesting/beautiful/strange/unusual or happy thing, and make up your own mind.

In part two of this newsletter, I´ll look more closely at the collage attached.

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