Couple Dancing 2012

It was a hot day. The neighbors were having their roof re-done: stripped, rebuilt, and then tarred. Working on that roof in June in New Mexico had to be hot, hard work. Ranchera music blasted out over the neighborhood. It seemed like the same song, or at least a variation of it, over and over and over. Annoyed by the incessant music, hot, and already tired, I started to work in my studio, picking up pieces of paper with images on them and moving them listlessly around, dropping them onto the different paintings I'd prepared earlier. And suddenly there they were: two figures dancing to the Ranchera Music-- stiff, quite polite, the man a little scary, but really a nice guy once you got to know him. I tried turning her face away, but then the painting became about fear, and that wasn't right. This was about two people in a strange land, connecting through what they knew and loved: the sounds of accordions, bugles, guitars, and violins, accompanying a soulful singer, a man dressed in tight pants, a white, fluffy shirt, a short jacket and a huge hat, singing about lost love and betrayal, loneliness and pain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6HcQ-bxaaM