
Tina z May
Acrylics on Canvas, Spring 2007
In Andalusia, we stayed in Albunuelas, in the Lecrin Valley, in El Cortijo del Piño. Because my mother was catholic, we went to mass in the village's tiny church, and made friends with Moses the breadman on our way down the country lane.
My mother spoke Spanish, though my parents were British, and with the help of her seven children and curious faith, infiltrated the Albunuelas community with surprising speed and dexterity. My father wrote on the veranda and remembered his photography days-- the months he spent traveling with the bullfighter Lucio Sandine after the fall of Franco. He drank wine with an old friend Pedro and my siblings and I imagined scenes of Torreros and picadors. In Tarragona, weeks later, we ended up on the rooftop of a hotel helping bullfighters clean their capes. My mother talked and my father clapped their hands. Later that afternoon we wandered through the Tarragona ring, pre-fight. The sand was laid out just so, and we walked through the center of the ring, ran our hands over thick gouges left in the red wood of the arena-- marks of bulls horns painted over. My littlest sister Catherine road on the shoulders of the bullfighter's manager while the men bartered for their beasts outside.
Viva
Acrylics on Canvas
Granada, 2006
