Street art

You may have noticed that, in my bedroom, there is a collection of paintings from my travels and beyond.

I do tend to go out of my way to collect art as a memory of the places I’ve lived, visited or love. Possibly not very valuable art, (example: a painting of the Laurentians I bought at a marchés aux puces when, we lived in Montreal every July, for about $10), but meaningful art and art which I love to wake up to and see.

When I visit a city, I always search out the street art. Street art feels like the heartbeat of the people. I love graffiti. I love seeing how people decorate their homes.

I love that people open little pop-up art galleries in small hole-in-the-wall shops.

Love street performers.

And I love the cultural significance of the art in any city, especially here with the much revered Day of the Dead celebrations.

But the kind of art that gets to my heart the most, are the paintings on the makeshift easels that people stick in rows and groups on the sidewalk. In so many ways this art is so much better than any painting in any high-brow gallery, and I’m always amazed at the affordable prices. (I know and have an appreciation of how much work, talent, and cost of material goes into each painting, let alone the hours spent in class and studio sweat learning.)

And I know that I can most likely paint myself anything I like, anything at all, but that’s not really the point here, because, even if I did, I’d miss the spirit and the essence of what other artists can bring to a piece of their art. I could no more capture their passion as their hours of experience and studio sweat. And, I appreciate that.

Each time I’m here in Puerto Vallarta, I search out a very special artist and buy one of his paintings. He is Xaime Ximenez. He doesn’t have the use of his arms and paints with the paintbrush in his mouth. Last year, C and I picked out the painting together, and this year C fell in love with this one the minute she spotted it, Mujer Y la Mar, (woman and the sea), and so she chose it for us.

I’m humbled by his bravely and talent.

But, as you may have failed to notice…lol…we’ve been on a bit of a Frida Kahlo kick lately.

And so, when we came across Rudy, we fell in love with his Frida portraits and with his knowledge and his passion for this Mexican icon.

Chloe fell in love with this painting and wanted to buy it right away, on the first day, but I fell in love with one Rudy was painting earlier in the week, and so we decided to wait for the second painting to be finished and go look at them both to decide which one we should add to our collection.

As it turns out, we couldn’t be without either one, and so we are adding these two Frida portraits to our world.

Aren’t we the luckiest girls? 😀

And here’s Chloe’s third video all ready for you. Don’t you love it? I do. 😀