Painting: Oil on Canvas.

Painted: 1998

Size: 24” x 18”

Owner: In Storage

Music Selection: “As My Guitar Gently Weeps” by George Harrison

It seems like every modern painter does some kind of painting of Frida Kahlo. The first time I saw a work by her was in the Phoenix art museum in the seventies. I’ve always been a fan of Diego Rivera, but it was the first time I had seen a work by his on again off again love interest and wife. In the late eighties or nineties, I saw another work by her that truly modified my perspective. The painting of a suicide victim spilled over onto the frame. This took the painting out of the box, and suddenly I too was no longer constrained by art’s preconceived limits. I asked myself how can I bring the viewer into the painting? I placed the viewer in the room with artists that are being trained by Frida. The viewer must ask themselves what is going on? Where do I fit in this painting? Am I the faceless critic or am I the disillusioned student? Does the painting reflect Frida’s injuries or her bohemian lifestyle? The story is up to the one looking into the painting. What do you see? Do you see rejection? Do you see success or failure? I want the viewer to look deep into Frida’s face.

Frida was severely injured in a tragic accident that left her in physical pain throughout her life. She used that physical pain as well as her emotional pain as an impetus to drive her art. Look deep into her art and you will feel her pain. You may notice that her art is self-absorbed. She tended to only look inward and missed the beauty around her in her work, yet we know she had good friends, good times, and scandalous love affairs. Her work is generally about herself, but the good thing is the viewer may too have felt her pain at one time on a much smaller level and if you look deep enough into yourself you may see a little piece of her living deep inside your psyche. Do this and her paintings are even more wonderful. 

This is a painting of an ordinary day at her art school. This is not the story of her tumultuous relationship with Diego or her plummet into greater despair. No, this is an ordinary day, yet there is a lot going on. I’ve tried to portray tension in this benign moment. For a time, she trained local artists, and she was very liberal in the way she was attired at these sessions, so I painted her clothed in a simple robe to capture that expression of who she was. Her upper torso is painted at odds with her lower torso as a reminder of the pain with which she constantly lived. Diego was another source of her pain as was her inability to bear children, but I could not build that into this moment, but I tried to place that pain in her expression.

Once one of her students was painting something benign like a pear and she chastised him for his lack of color. She said the world is filled with color so those pigments should be seen in your work. I try to follow this sage advice. I hope the guy wasn’t making up the story because it influenced the way I paint today. The viewer can dismiss this as just another painting of Frida, but she was one of my inspirations, so I hope the viewer sees more than another poor example of just another Frida painting.