Mexico City
After cruising around the Southwest (taking lots of pictures of vintage motel signs for future paintings!), we've landed in Southern California. When I collected my waiting mail, I had a surprise waiting--my watercolor and ink painting, Parque Mexico, won an honorable mention in the national juried AZ Aqueous Show! What an awesome welcome back to California.
Beautiful Parque Mexico in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City.
Sunday morning painting and daydreaming about Mexico City.
This morning the Spanish band La Pegatina is providing the soundtrack to Sunday watercolor painting. This morning I discovered their yet unopened CD in the bottom of the backpack I'd taken to Mexico City last fall.
We had paid a visit to Tianguis Cultural del Chopo, or "El Chopo", a Saturday flea market in Colonia Guerrero near the Metro Buenavista subway stop. This market trades in anarchist literature and art, used tapes and CDs, punk paraphernalia, band t-shirts, piles of Doc Martins. And at the end of the slithering, tented aisles of memorabilia from the teenage wasteland, you are rewarded when the alley opens onto a blocked off intersection crowded with mohawked Chilangos and a band playing. While a hard core band throbbed meters away, La Pegatina played their impromptu jam session across the intersection, between parked cars and the dazed victim of a recent brawl, weaving their way Pied Piper style through the crowd and cars for their following fans. It was a loony scene to encounter, and I bought their latest CD, finding out later that the band is not local to DF--they're actually from Barcelona.
I thought it'd be fitting today to give the CD I bought that day, Revulsiu, a listen while I revisit Mexico City as inspiration for my paintings. Today, I worked on a smaller painting of some down and out hotels in the Zocalo area.
On location sketch at Tianguis Cultural del Chopo in Mexico City. October, 2015.
Finishing up today's painting--hotels near the Zocalo in Mexico City.
