El Paso ..The Jaguar Lives

El Paso oil/board 2019

El Paso , the painting,  is my response to the bloodshed where the killer targeted people that looked like Mexicans. Never mind the majority killed were Americans of Mexican heritage. 

How "El Paso" Came to Be: 

I never know what the final work will look like or what it will evoke. This painting..."El Paso" is no different.

I am a process painter as so eloquently defined by painter, Grace Hartigan. When I approach the canvas...the blank space..... I have no clue or preconception of where the journey will lead me. I let it happen. I am an instrument.

Sometimes the journey is long, other times it is hopscotch.However . . . after the massacre of innocents in El Paso where a killer targeted Mexican-Americans...people like me.... I wanted to paint....to do something expressing the horror of such events. What came first was the color red.....blood....lots of it.
In the process...or in the search for truth....the color red gave way to a celebration of color . Out of this smattering of color the image of a Jaguar emerged. Strong, caught in a dance of color ...the Jaguar appears....reminding us   of our Mexican/Chicano being .....We are the Jaguar.