Painting in Mexico

I have travelled very little over the years and have always felt deeply rooted in my home province of New Brunswick on Canada’s east coast. One becomes tied to a landscape I think. I have talked to folks raised on the prairies who simply cannot live in the mountains, however beautiful; “Old Salts” who cannot imagine settling anywhere they cannot look out over an expanse of sea and smell salt in the air. Such people are not necessarily provincial in their attitudes, but they are grounded in a place and content to stay put.

We first came to Barra de Navidad, on Mexico'c Pacific coast, at the invitation of friends in the winter of 2017. Mexico looked wonderful to me on that first visit but, at the same time, I felt dislocated, and the landscape I had left, the forests and snow-covered fields I have painted so often, left me feeling I could not paint anywhere else. We came back for a month last winter and, by the end of that time, this landscape had begun to sink in.

This winter, back home, winter came early and with a vengeance. We had made plans to return to Barra for a couple of months in the new year and, when I went to my studio after a summer in the garden, I was drawn to images of Barra's warm and sunny landscape. I decided to pack my oils and brushes and take them with me.

It didn't take long to set up a simple studio space outside at our 'Casa' and I was delighted when the owners of a couple of small local galleries responded positively to my inquiries about exhibiting my work. I mounted a small show called Colours of Barra, first at Robert Hansen's Barra Galeria de Arte and then at Alison Grootveld's La Bruja.