The Ritual of the Habitual

Wake by the sound of the wind chimes. Open the door and drown in the humidity and salty oxygen that floods the air in the Caribbean tropics. It takes a minute to adjust your eyes to the extreme sunlight bouncing on the white floor of the inner backyard. Walk through but avoid stepping into an unwanted gift left behind by the dogs during the night before to reach the back stairs located in the yard of the opulent house.
Go to the second floor and find Dona Gladys. She is having Breakfast, with the ceremonious tranquility acquired after 9 decades of solemn duty. Soon there will be time for sewing, lunch, siesta, TV and at 5pm a well-deserved pause to go to the balcony. Right when the sun is falling, and the breeze starts to cool down the otherwise inclement heat that condemns this city all year long. This is a ritual of the habitual, an everyday routine my grandmother developed twenty years ago, the day my grandfather died, the day she decided to move upstairs to never leave the house again. This is what I paint. I attempt to evoke a world that I remember, that I know well, where I have lived all my life. What I think is the essence of my human experience, it lays not on the peak events but rather in the unconscious flow of little things. And the sum of those hours creates a synergy that is important and eternal