The Light of the Night

There is a garden high in the Andes where I like to be with the night. The paintings on these pages are part of a series about these nocturnal embraces. Once the sun goes down, in areas without electricity, you can be in an undisrupted flow with the night. She doesn't have the same visual hierarchy and preoccupations as the day does when separations are clear. The night blends us together, and after the initial fear and loss of orientation passes, an intimate immensity begins to reign. The outside becomes the inside, the inside becomes the outside, and what is far and open pulls us closer. Our threads weave themselves in a permeable joyful conversation with what surrounds us. Color too happens differently. I am interested in that kind of color.

The black-on-black paintings, same as the white-on-white ones, are also my attempt to meet invisibility. How is this powerful invisibility present? How can I create space inside the paintings the way we feel space at night? I want to quiet down the multitude of sounds, the crowds of already digested things that populate us to be new. I think of the act of making love when small gestures are whole universes. You drop the noise to be present in the invisibility. Darkness invites us to embrace the inherent, if latent, light that resides in blackness.

"Mantilla" (Shawl) Acrylic inks and acrylics on paper with cut-outs 15" × 11" 2015.

"En los meses oscuros las anhelo" (In the Dark Months I Long for Her) 82" × 60". Acrylic inks and acrylics on paper with cut-outs. 2016.

"Comienzos de la oscuridad" (Beginnings of a darkness) Inks and collage on paper 13.25" × 13.25" 2015.

"Vaivenes" (Sway) 40" × 26" Acrylic inks, acrylics, glitter on paper with cut-outs. 2015.

"Tu tierra toca mi tierra" (Your earth touches my earth) 40" × 26" Acrylic inks and acrylics on paper with cut-outs. 2015