"Lunch at weaving village, Santa Catarina Barahona, Guatemala" , 22" x 28" oil

Mildred weaves. Full spectrum colors through her fingers become finely woven double sided designs for table runners. She is a business woman selling her weaving to add to her husband's wages in the field.  She has done well.  At 27 she has four children and owns a fine china cabinet. Color yarns fly through her fingers while she is sheltered by a manicured, gray, unbaked clay floor, corrugated steel roof between cement block walls of neighboring buildings. Her home is open air to let out the kitchen fire smoke. Unfiltered open air light is fine to judge the color effects.

I am honored to own a work that took her two and a half weeks to make. But I feel a little guilty because our tour company, OAT, wants to keep the lunch in the home of a Mayan specifically as a cultural experience and not a sales op. I on the other hand feel enriched by knowing the artist and by having a glimpse of her life.

I hope my painting is a worthy documentation of Mildred's life as a weaver and woman in a cluster of extended family households. Having extended family working together makes her weaving for hours and hours possible.

So a simple humble dwelling might be ideal in a land of many earthquakes and volcanic activity?