Bracera Embarazada : Second Place Winner : Series

Acrylic

$450 Price without Frame

My inspiration for fine art comes from the world around me. While I enjoy the raw beauty of the desert southwest or exotic views from Asia or Europe, I take delight as well from seeing people or animals within those environments. I love translating what I see into watercolor, acrylic or oil paintings.

Braceros Triptych The pandemic has led to new definitions of “essential” workers, a long list that includes workers and laborers from many occupations and many fields. Among them, sometimes overlooked, we must include migrant farm workers—"braceros”. They are at the bottom of our food chain explicitly and figuratively. Without them, we would not have much of our fresh food harvests—the start of our food chain. And they themselves exist often at the margins of our society—struggling at the bottom of society. These paintings attempt to capture what I saw of braceros working almost in my own back yard in the rich agricultural valley of Mesilla, NM. I felt like I was intruding… which I was.

Work in the chili fields can be back breaking especially if you are a woman and you are pregnant. Still, you do the work with pride. Note the red-polished fingernails.