Why I Paint What I Paint

This is NOT a portrait (retrato) of an immigrant.  This is a portrait of 16 year old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez.  He was in Nogales near the wall that separates the United States and Mexico.  The Huffington Post says, "An autopsy report indicates a Mexican Teen who apparently was shot to death by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in October was struck by at least eight bullets, all but one hitting him in the back".  He and other youths were throwing rocks at the Border Patrol.   An anonymous source commented that  "Border Agents are generally allowed to use lethal force against rock throwers".

People With No Names, The Undocumented: 108

This 20" x 30" oil on canvas depicts one of the growing number of immigrant women in the deportee dining room in Nogales, Mexico.  She has tried to run to higher ground (the north)...she was not successful this time...but she will probably keep trying because life depends on it.  Today I heard a discussion of the salvific power of myth and folklore in people groups.  Specifically,  when people pass on descriptions of what happens and what to do in the event of natural disasters, they are passing on life saving information.  In the case of a tsunami,  certain coastal dwelling people groups know that when the sea rushes out,  run for higher ground.  If you are tempted to remain, or even spend time inspecting the new landscape, you will perish.  In 'economic tsunamis',  when jobs, land and food are swept away,  people need to get to safe ground.

America's Most Wanted #11

I met this man in the deportee center in Nogales.  Notice the logo on his sweatshirt!  It is internationally recognizable...because money, corporations, food and goods now move freely all over the world.  We accept that we live in a smaller and smaller,  more and more connected world.  And yet, we still argue over, and restrict the movement of,  'human capital'.  Humans migrate for the very same reason that birds migrate...to save their lives.  And the reason that humans try to migrate again and again,  is that the reasons propelling them still exist:  Multi-national corporations have taken over their farms and factories,  a family member needs medical care,  kids need schooling,  and everyone is hungry.  It is ironic that the sweatshirt and its maker are allowed to roam the globe freely,  but this valuable human-being is criminalized for trying to find honest work in the rich country that borders his own.

America's Most Wanted #7

This young man is tall, blond, and has green eyes.  He is from Guatemala and I met him at a deportee center in Nogales.  He stands out from the others because of his different coloring and stature.  The other men tease him because he has light eyes, light hair, and he is tall.  He is testimony to the fact that people are moving all over the globe.  He is good-natured with the teasing,  and claims that his small daughter in Guatemala looks just like him.  He may not physically resemble his fellow deportees,  but here how he is the SAME as all the other men and women in the center:  He looks dazed, exhausted...and determined.  He, (like all the others) has a family far away that is counting on him to find work and find a way to care for them. 

People With No Names - The Undocumented #64

This 8" x 18" oil on museum board shows three immigrant attemptees, who have been caught and deported back to Nogales. I don't know how many times they have tried to enter the U.S. The average,remember, is about four times until success or death. And many times, the attemptees are so exhausted, cold and hungry that they just give themselves up when they see a border patrol person. (Because, often their coyotes "paid guides" have lied to them about the length and arduousness of the journey in order to get their money.) Despite the fact that it is expressly, legally forbidden to sneak into the U.S., the tempting serpent keeps whispering that there is lots of food, and work, and money in the rico El Norte. Wouldn't you listen, too, if you had nothing to lose?

People With No Names - The Undocumented #63

This is an 8" x 12" oil on masonite. It is of three people at the deportee center in Nogales. The three different angles of their bodies suggest the way that none of them really knows which direction their lives will go next. When we have money and documents, we have some semblance of control over our lives...or think that we do. We have the hubris to think that we know what is coming next. We don't. We are all the same in this.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #55

This 11'x14" oil on canvas depicts a father who I met at the Comedor in Nogales, Mexico. He was picked up walking across the desert at night (in below freezing temperatures), and deported. He is wrapped in a large moving van sort of blanket as he shows me a photo of his toddler daughter who lives in the U.S. with his wife. Both his wife and daughter are U.S. citizens and the small family has been living and working productively in the U.S for years. Because he was unsuccessful returning to his wife, she has been forced to move in with her mother in California. He does not know when he will see his family again.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #54

This oil on canvas 20"x 22"depicts a family that was recently re-united at the Comedor (a place where deportees are fed and given clothing and medical attention just a few hundred yards south of the U.S./Mexico border). The family had been living and working for years in Phoenix, AZ. when the parents (not U.S. citizens) went to a funeral in Mexico. When they tried to return to their children (U.S. citizens) in Phoenix, they were caught by border patrol and deported to Mexico. The "Samaritans", a group in Southern Arizona who are committed to protecting the welfare and even the lives of immigrants in the region, managed to re-unite the family in Nogales. I found it interesting to observe the various postures of the family members...the mother holding them all together, the father who needs to stay in the shadows to go undetected by authorities as he seeks to care for his family, the child in repose against her father's breast, the central child who looks like she is dancing or holding the world in her arms, and the son, looking outward...knowing that he will have to go out and help care for his family all too soon. I am re-reading Anne LaMott's TRAVELING MERCIES, and something that her preacher said seems to apply to this situation perfectly: "This is life's nature: that lives and hearts get broken---those of people we love, those of people we'll never meet. The world sometimes feels like the waiting room of the emergency ward and that we who are more or less OK for now need to take the tenderest possible care of the more wounded people in the waiting room, until the healer comes." Bravo Samaritans!

People With No Names - The Undocumented #35

This is a Department Store in Nogales, (I think we were still on the U.S. side) and I thought it was a cheery pink store with a fairy tale name. It was only afterward, as I read more and more about NAFTA and immigration policies that I realized how very apropos it is to think in terms of Mexico as the mistreated step-sister. Cinderella is the one who does all the cleaning, and fetching, and is kept out of sight. She is not considered a legitimate part of the family and has no one to advocate for her. She certainly CANNOT go to the ball.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #30

This 24"x36" oil on canvas image is of a man who I met in Nogales. His story is a good news/bad news. The bad news is: this husband, father, and agricultural worker was deported and cannot rejoin his U.S. citizen wife and child. His family has had to move in with relatives in California, as they wait and hope for his return. The good news is: He is alive. He is not one of the 200+ people who die in the desert each year. He is deported, but alive. There is still 'possibility' in his future. Re-unifiction of families and economic well-being are the two main reasons for immigration.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #29

This woman from El Salvador is receiving a simple nourishing meal at a refugee shelter in Nogales. A young woman from my church observed that, "serving others in the context of hospitality is a powerful act, and a beautiful 'welcoming of all' at the table of our society".

People With No Names - The Undocumented #26

I kept trying to paint this Nogales Mary exactly as I had photographed her, and it just wasn't working. Then I stumbled on the Bonnard painting of a little girl at the table...the one where the canvas is almost totally filled with a white breakfast table littered with all manner of foodstuffs. I realized that if I put "my contemporary Mary" (the immigrant who is 4 mos. pregnant and trying to travel with her husband to the United States) into this composition it would be redolent with meaning, as well as working as a painting composition. Thankyou Pierre Bonnard! Now my painting makes me think of the 'Table of Plenty' song we sing at church, especially the line, "God will provide for all that we need, here at the table of plenty".

People With No Names - The Undocumented #18

These 4 women and about 75 men are eating the first of two meals a day at the Centro para Atencion a los Migrantes Deportados in Nogales, Mexico a few hundred yards from where Mexico borders Arizona. There, volunteers serve two hearty meals a day and provide basic medical care and clothes or shoes to those who need them. Many people tell the same story: namely they had been living and working in the U. S. for years, went home to visit a dying relative or some other equally important family event and then could not return 'home' to family and a longtime work situation in the U.S. One man even owned his own blacksmithing business near Seattle (having come to th U.S. as a small child), spoke fluent English, and now found himself in the no-man's land of the immigration debacle. He was eager to get 'home' because he has employees who work for him.

Works In Progress #3

Here I am just reducing the Nogales Mary to its basic geometry. I don't know why but the simplest elements are always the most powerful...probably a good metaphor for our lives.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #15

This is "Nogales Trinity". The two women in the back are some of the deportees who all help clean up after they finish the meal that the volunteers at the Kino Border Initiative have fed them. This woman in the front is talking about her family...her five children that she left with her parents in Guatemala. She has just learned that while she was walking across the desert to find work and care for her family, her oldest child died of Denge fever. Her parents did not want to tell her (lest she become even more disheartened) but her 10 year old daughter blurted it out to her over the phone. She began to weep as she told me.

The Monk Librarian #4

Yesterday I went to Nogales, Mexico to meet with Immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. As I heard their stories, I kept hoping that I could, in some small way do them justice as I depict them visually. Their lives are characterized by: uncertainty, loss and physical hardship...things that can befall all of us...but in their case are pretty much a constant. By my accident of birth, I live in the illusion that I can prevent many of these things. I marveled at the ease with which I waltzed back and forth across the border...twice in one day!! I had no fear of the border patrol's guns and dogs; but trust me , they DID look very scary.