ARTIST'S COMMENTARY (continued)
It next occurred to me, that this symbol might be used in repetition, fleshed out a bit, and made to imply an actual landscape. This idea intrigued me, that is, combining the pre-Columbian architectural form being used to describe mountains, with a water-color technique inspired by ancient Chinese and Japanese landscape painting.
I have always loved the mist and mountains of Asian landscape painting and I've also spent a substantial amount of time close to Mayan pyramids.
During the nine years I lived in New York City I made it my habit to schedule my shows in the Fall or early Winter and take the proceeds, whatever they amounted to, down to Mexico, and sometimes Guatemala, until April or May, where I could live more inexpensively and work at my leasure.
One of my favorite retreats was a campground a mile from the ruins of the ancient Mayan city now called "Palenque". For about one dollar a night, I slept in a Mexican hammock under the grass roof of a "palapa", just yards from the edge of the rainforest. For entertainment, I visited the pyramids and palace structures and the museum, at the ruins site. I learned much about the rainforest over the years I Wintered there, and about many things by the everchanging campground visitors, on subjects from Mayan history to natural healing and from Mexican culture to Zen Buddhism.
I became interested in the Mayan culture an in the mid-eighties, my curiosity finally brought me to hike two days into the jungle to visit traditional Mayan villages. A few valleys into the jungle and I found traditional Mayans speaking "Chol", a Mayan dialect, quietly living away from civilization in the abundance of nature the rainforest provides.
"Two Mountains"
Diptych, 17 x 11 in.
egg tempera on writing paper
Dec. 24, 1986