The Artist

This is me in a previous life!

Looking West

Here is my latest landscape called Looking West.  The Palm Springs Art Museum has a collection of paintings by Lockwood De Forest, one of my favorite landscape artists.  He was able to create light and dark values in small landscapes that were subtle and yet inspiring.  The Palm Springs show includes a series he did in Coachella Valley back in the early 1900s, before any of this area was very built up at all.  They are beautiful landscapes, many with a moon in the sky and the lighting showing the glow of the desert at twilight.  This painting has raised bas relief sections at the bottom, so the "triangular" sections are textured and divided.  There is a layer of gold leaf in the center, creating the line of hills between the foreground and the background.  The small crescent moon in the sky is my homage to De Forest.

My new "Passages" series

These paintings are the beginning of my new series entitled Passages.  The Passages collection is an allegory on the theme of humanity's process of transition from one's current state of being into another.   The characters are caught in one of the pivotal moments or times of our lives  where we all must make a decision which requires deep reflection.  The figures stand in the doorway between the past and the future.  The doorway is a portal or a means of access to reaching a personal admission or freedom, a specific beginning or an undetermined end. 

The figures' garments places them firmly in the beginning of the last century, and returns them to a time period which closely mirrors our present day.  The correlation between now and then is evident in many aspects of our social, political and religious issues and world events that created enormous progress while at the same time bringing us to the brink of destruction with The World War.  This time period allows the viewer a convenient distance from the present and hopefully allowing them to a calm yet passionate reflection of contemporary issues.  

Leaving Paradise

The predicament of leaving one's ideal of home and safety, one's country or relationships is a common and complex experience for all of us.  The decision to move through this experience can be approached with emotional and spiritual strength or with fear and uncertainty. The idea of paradise is also an illusion. One's idea of safety or freedom can be altered by other's assumption of theirs. It can be a time remembered with shame and regrets, or with happiness, confidence and joy. The road chosen will determine the outcome of all our stories and will influence the remainder of all our lives. Sometimes the need to look back one more time can be melancholy as well as a comforting memory.

Siempre Esperando (Always Waiting)

The man stands alone at a time of decision.  A strong, lone figure standing in the passageway needing to move forward  is stuck in time by many emotional, social and personal obstructions that are causing him to stop and reflect one more time before making a pivotal decision.  Can he move through this purity of light that presents unknown possibilities?  Can he turn his back on the enclosing dark walls of time from his past? This is a constant of most people's journey through life and the ability to make this decision freely is one of humanities biggest challenges.

The Letter 

 In our lives we experience moments that create pivotal changes within ourselves. These moments arrive in many ways and in many forms, such as news received through a letter, and we are captured in a private moment of learning about events that have occurred and the realization of what our outcome will be. Change has happened, life has altered, and we are transformed, good or bad. That instant is what I  am fascinated with. That second, that one second of so many thousands of seconds, but it is one of those instances that we will allow to define who we will become for ever more.

 

Clouded Vision . . . Again!

Rarely does an artist get the opportunity to revisit a work, but I was given that opportunity when a man from Florida commissioned a companion piece to Clouded Vision.  The original painting as sold by Howard Schepp Fine Art to a couple who live in Vancouver, British Columbia.   The Florida man saw the painting on the Schepp website and commissioned me to make him a smaller (20" X 24") version of the painting.   As a child, born and growing up in Cuba, I was told the story of Santa Caridad, Cuba’s patron saint of charity.  She is a mixed-race virgin figurine that was found in the waters off of Eastern Cuba, and she protects believers' issues involving love, fertility, childbirth, and material prosperity.  The story I was told explained how three fishermen were out at sea when a terrible storm threatens their survival, and just before they perished, the black fisherman witnesses a vision of the Santa Caridad and prays to her for help. She grants them safety back to the island and asks them to spread the word of her existence.   As a child I could not envision this miracle.  Instead, I always imagined a frightening storm on the ocean with a ray of blinding sunlight breaking thru the storm to provide guidance to land.  At age seven, we migrated to New Orleans, a life for me very familiar to my Cuban life.  New Orleans is filled with a colorful culture mixed with religious and social similarities.  The Afro-Cuban deities and the Santerismo with their voodoo, the slavery, and the French and Spanish influences in the culture and lifestyles all contributed to my approach to painting Clouded Vision.   I painted it with a sense of nostalgia in antique tones and patina surfaces with superstitious undertones.   In this painting I merged both of my worlds -- my Cuban past and my Southern upbringing -- and created a painting that is on one hand traditional and, and on the other, personal.  The story has always represented to me that when in times of trouble (or "clouded vision") you hope for the one wish that will bring you to solace.  

Down On The Bayou

With all the flooding of the Mississippi River, Max has been thinking about his childhood and growing up down in New Orleans.  This painting, Down On The Bayou, is a tribute to the Mississippi River, with the gifts and beauty it provides yet the tribulations it can bring.  And of course, the majesty of the bayous and deltas of the south.  Sometimes artwork that shows the uniqueness and serenity of a place helps us all deal better with the current problems in our world.  The grandeur of the Mississippi is that it is a long and wide river that ebbs and flows with the seasons as it provides life for all of us here in this land.  Max always believes that nature's lessons of taking care of itself is one to remember. The color of the sun rising on another day, with the crescent moon lingering over the Crescent City, brings hope of another day of happiness and growth.  

If I Could Fly

The figure of a man seconds after jumping off a precipice with the ocean just ahead of him. His arms flailed back to look as if he believes they are wings, yet with a sense of abandonment.  This painting Max did in bas-relief style, colored with washes of white as to mimic the effects of aged stone.  The male nude image evokes a rawness and vulnerability; the white wash color describes purity and cleansing. The apparent insinuations are not as confined as they appear.  With my current themes of veiled subjects, the jump is a decisive point in action of complete freedom. The power of self-determination from emotional, psychological, spiritual or physical restrictions is a liberating one. The raised bas relief of the figure brings him closer and indulges the viewer to touch, the way sculpture does.

Indian Summer

By definition, Indian Summer refers to our warm weather that occurs here in our late autumn. But it is also defined as a period of happiness or success occurring late in one's life. This embodies not only Max's story but the story of so many of us who have embraced living here in in the desert of Palm Springs, our beautiful, peaceful valley, and call it home. The bas relief allows you to touch the very surface of the landscape, with undertones of gold leaf that shimmer in the warm sun yet glow dim with the evening moon, and of the extensive bright sky we bask under. This painting is one of Max's tributes to the  allure that so many of us have been captivated by.

The Waning Moon

Max has always been inspired by landscapes.  He began his painting career doing a variety of landscapes, all somewhat expressionistic and distressed.  Today he is doing a series based on the phases of the moon, and including an image of a moon at a different phase in each painting.  Sometimes he paints the landscape as a diptych, stretching it between two square paintings.  Other times, it's a long horizontal painting like the one above, which measures 16 inches by 48 inches.  These long horizontal images give the paintings that "wide angle" view naturally seen by the human eye.  Look in the landscape section for more of Max's new paintings.