There are only three countries in the world that have a primitive art movement. One is in Haiti, another is in Yugoslavia, the last is in Nicaragua.
In the southern part of Nicaragua are a group of 26 islands in a province called Solentiname. A Catholic priest arriving there many years ago noticed locals painting on gourds and helped them move their inspirations to canvas. Local artists continue to paint and earn livings from this stylistic folk art.
This room, at the San Francisco Convent Museo in Granada, is dedicated to the Nicaraguan primitive art movement that celebrates nature, community,order, and color.
The works and artists, though different, all belong in this room. They work within a style that is larger than they are, an ocean that supports their boats.
It is like the Garden of Eden calling you home.
The intensity of the artist’s focus is like the eyes of a tiger watching you from inside it’s cage.
In the San Francisco Convent Museo are a series of paintings that chronicle Nicaraguan history.
The paintings start with aboriginal peoples who first inhabit lands before they are claimed by anyone but God. Then paintings move, in book style, through discovery and founding, colonization, building and commerce, fights for independence, reconstruction and modernization.
These paintings wait for the arrival of a brand new brother or sister.
Maybe the next painting born will be of a new Panama Canal, through Nicaragua? Maybe the next will show the country moving from Socialist/Marxist group ideology to free market small business capitalism, the way the United States used to be before it lost it’s way.
People all over the world these days seem weary of their leaders.
People following their own drummer seems a healthier recipe than falling in step with someone else’s twenty year plan.
Ann’s art studio is also a gallery, a meeting place, a classroom, a resource of information, a great place to pick up a brush if you have an itch.
Studios, as opposed to galleries, are works in process.
There are finished and unfinished compositions on the walls, stacked in corners, left on easels. There are cans of brushes and rags, solvents and photographs of scenes that interest pinned to boards.The discussions here are about color, line, proportion, texture, what you want to say, how to put paint on a flat canvas to get a three dimensional shape and how to create art people want to buy.
Some of the works here have Nicaraguan scenes while others channel European or American traditions.
A studio is a place of discovery.
All these projects are around me, whispering, laughing, demanding attention, asking me to purchase them and find a place at home to show them off.
The pursuit of art is noble even if it gets messy and expensive.
Calzada Street begins at the Granada Cathedral and ends at Lake Nicaragua. This street has become a main tourist draw and has everything a tourist might want, and plenty they don’t need.
In the stretch down both sides of Calzada Street you have bars, restaurants, street vendors, an open seating area in the middle of the street, waiters standing on sidewalks promoting mojitos and two for one Happy Hour. This place is a mixed drink of locals, foreigners, tourists, ex-pats, hustlers, transients, businessmen, artists and artisans, homeowners.
In the old days this was a sleepy street and residents lived normal lives. With an influx of foreigners, real estate became more valuable than most could have ever imagined. A quiet street on the way to the Lake became the Las Vegas Strip. Old adobe homes were suddenly valuable.
This house on Calzada Street has brought local issues out into public.
It’s owner calls out swindlers, by name.
The bottom line is that this house is not for sale, unless, of course, the price is right.
Swindlers buy dirt cheap and sell sky high.
Swindlers, and those swindled, dance a fine line on Calzada Street.
The Historical District is deceptive.
Walking narrow streets and sidewalks, you meet massive walls and sturdy doors, wrought iron,sturdy secure steel gates.
When you peek through cracked doors, or open windows, you are surprised with glimpses of cozy interiors, plants, fountains, bicycles on tile floors, rocking chairs, big screen televisions. Drafts of cool air, funneled through the house, hit you in the face.
These old original homes are built with thick adobe walls which cuts noise, keeps temperatures constant, and keeps occupants safe. By opening windows and doors you get ventilation. There are multiple porches and open spaces for dining and entertaining.
If I lived in one of these old homes, I would spend much of my time on the upstairs porch, rocking in a chair, sipping coffee, listening to the neighborhood.
The rest of the day my shoes would be in the streets following the pied piper.
These colonial homes, re-habbed, or not, all use lots of space, built in a time when there were fewer people in the city, space wasn’t sold per square foot, and families were bigger.
There is still, in Nicaragua, plenty of space to lose, or find yourself.
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