People With No Names - The Undocumented #80

This 24" x36" oil on canvas depicts an immigrant who is doing gardening work in my neighborhood.  I love his turquoise ladder and orange glove.  I will probably return again and again to the ladder metaphor/motif in my paintings...but maybe not always as a way UP (up in society, up economically).  Rather,  I am thinking of the ladder as a tool that helps a person "reach" something that is unreachable, and return to the ground safely.  We all need effective tools in our lives.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #21

This Guatemalan woman is weeding. The man who is working with her is working on the ladder. She is willing to clean the ground in this new country...just knowing that the ladder of opportunity exists for her.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #17

This is Caesar, hand clipping each of the 30 Italian Cypress bushes around the perimeter of a property so that the skinny shrubs will fatten up. (Everything fattens up in America, right?) Again he is up on the ladder. In our life journey we all want to climb up, BUT ESPECIALLY we want our kids to climb up. Who doesn't want to boost his/her kids up on his shoulders to give him a bigger view of the world. It is a mini glimpse of the future. Ladders, shoulders, and feet are the only means at hand. Immigrants are certainly not flying up here on airplanes...although we DO deport many of them on airplanes (see the photo on page 8A of the Sept 10, 2010 USA TODAY), which always strikes me as funny, because even though they are shackled, they REALLY get an up close glimpse of what an incredibly muy rico country this is! And then they are probably doubly motivated to try again, just for an opportunity to climb the ladder, to boost their kids up on their shoulders.

People With No Names - The Undocumented #16

This is another of my "ladder paintings". I have noticed that ladders are a recurrent image in many of my paintings, due to the fact that many jobs such as gardenwork, painting houses, cleaning houses require the use of a ladder. The ladder is a metaphor for the journey. I will walk step by step up, from down in Central America to El Norte to find opportunity and work for my family. I will leave the comfort and safety of terra firma (my culture, my family, my language). If I am short in stature (as are many indigenous people) I will take more steps. I will start at the bottom of the ladder: walking, weeding and waiting. I will prop my ladder against a wall of opportunity, possibility and hope. (Note that I painted this in squares, merely focusing on the beautiful colors in each quadrant of the image, because many pieces have to come together for these people to gain a chance at a new life. Also I purposely decided not to let the ladder come all the way to the ground to indicate the precarious position that the immigrant is always in.)

People With No Names - The Undocumented #12

This man came to my door early one morning in July 2010 asking for work in my garden. Actually my son awoke me saying a man named Caesar Chavez was at the door and, well, I jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs to the door! I mean, his name is so iconic! Anyway, he and his helper are from Guatemala and spent an entire day on ladders removing thorny branches from the roses. They are small statured people but so tireless and hardworking. I realized that the ladders, they have to use are very apt. They just need a little assistance getting up...and then they will work. They are very motivated.