Guatemala Paintings

I’ve devoted a separate section to these scenes from Guatemala. My acrylic paintings were inspired by my daughter Emma’s photography. She lived and worked in Guatemala for four years, and took  beautiful photos of the Mayan people. My objective was to focus mainly on portraying facial expressions and colorful garments. For the faces, I did not attempt to create a perfect likeness, but rather capture the essence of what Emma's photos were conveying to the viewer. I began each time with a charcoal sketch, paying attention to head shape, and the proper position of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. When applying the paint, I concentrated on proper skin tone, contrast, values and hue, and where the light source was coming from. For the clothing, I worked on the folds in the fabric, and tried to depict the beautiful intricate patterns found in the traditional Guatemalan clothing without painting every detail.   Because acrylics are difficult to blend, I did not preoccupy myself with that but instead placed colors alongside each other, arrayed carefully in stepwise progression from light to mid values to dark and back, letting the human eye fill in the rest. Scenery was kept simple so as not to detract from the people who were the center of my attention. These paintings were featured in a 2019 exhibit at the Latino Art Museum, where each painting was paired with  one of Emma’s twin photos.