Reconnect with magic in nature and the cosmos

Wild is the Wind, 2024
Watercolor and gouache on Arches cotton paper
22.5 x 30 inches
$3,750

This year, I’ve been working in a generous friend’s guest house with floor-to-ceiling windows set in a leafy garden where I have been making large-scale watercolor paintings as part of a series titled Dreamwalking in the Tender Garden/ Soñar despierta

In this series, I use the seemingly elemental simplicity of watercolor to articulate notions of my ancestral maternal heritage and to underscore our forgotten connection with the natural and cosmic worlds. These artworks emerge from within me through a lyrical and intuitive approach. Each one aims to be a pilgrimage towards rediscovery, a search to return to the essence of home, and, simultaneously, symbolize the ideas and feelings I have developed over time.
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​Here I am with 
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I am a drop (Amor Vacui), 2024
Watercolor on Arches cotton paper
​78.75 x 51.25 inches
​$8,700

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I’m a regular lap swimmer, and at the end of a swim, I’m always in the mood to linger with a twist or spin underwater. It makes me think of our aquatic cousins and how familiar their movements feel in my body. And that has gotten me thinking about how we know what we know and how we unlearn those things. I’ve been curious about epigenetics and wondering if we can have intergenerational trauma, could we not also hold distant happy memories? There are things we call instincts. Maternal instincts come to mind, as do the thoughts of young children with their hearts full of empathy and love for other animals. This is where my work has been taking me these days.

As you may also know, I am the daughter of a Mexican mother and a white father from the USA. My late mother’s family is mestiza, which is the term for people who are a mix of Indigenous and European ancestry popularized in early colonial Mexico. I have found myself returning to spirituality and exploring the beliefs of ancient Mesoamericas. What I am learning is that, at their core, there are many similarities in the worldviews of the original people throughout the Americans. Those worldviews embrace intuition and feeling and include engaging spiritually with other beings, the world, and the universe. Embracing this can mean living with more awe and wonder in the great mystery of life, which I find very appealing.  

​Winged Soul, 2024
Watercolor on Arches cotton paper
​51.25 x 37.5 inches
$6,340


​Butterflies are symbols of renewal, change, magical transformation, and of lost souls in many cultures, including pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican. Their forms change from caterpillar into a chrysalis where they emerge as a beautiful butterfly. They cross borders and worlds. Do their lives continue transforming to carry the souls of the departed, as my mother said? Entertaining this recalls a quote by the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa:
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“Magic is the total delight (appreciation) of chance.”

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So, it seems we know things and then we unlearn a lot as we grow older. We lose our wonder and awe for the world around us and each other. Or, perhaps more accurately, we bury them with notions of what we ironically think of as the “real world.” With definitions, dogmas, and ideologies that humans have invented and have papered over our understanding of the world—the names of nation-states and their boundaries, brands, titles, and all other signifiers that keep us from seeing ourselves and each other for who we are and how we exist in relation to other beings, the earth, and the universe.
 
It is as if we are so busy being rational that we hardly feel. Are we, perhaps, missing half the fun of being on this beautiful earth? Like our antenna is broken, and we don’t sense the energetic vibrations from life all around us to sound woo-woo, but I think there is some truth in it.
 
So, I’ve been going inward and brushing away the veils we’ve laid over our consciousness to connect with what I sense. And I’m trying to rebalance rational thinking with intuitive feeling. I’ve enjoyed immersing myself in these thoughts and creating these worlds in my artworks. I hope that they help awaken unseen connections for you and enrich your life as well.