OLD EMPIRE
“DOCUMENTING AN OLD EMPIRE”
National Parks Service Artist-in-Residence at The San Antonio Missions
The intent of this project was to document the San Antonio Missions through a traditional and archaic form of oil painting. Painting en Plein Air has long been a device to capture, in an artistic formalistic manner, the changing light that transforms the stimulus that the artist is engaging. Usually the artist is overtly concerned with creating an image that caters to the actual end product of a ‘beautiful painting’. It was not my concern to make ‘pretty plein air paintings’. These oil paintings for me act as the beginning of truly understanding the subject matter. In this case the actual history and the recognizing of lost histories was what I really found fascinating.
The San Antonio Missions are old and crumbling. There has been an immense effort to restore and preserve these structures so that people today can appreciate the ‘beginnings’ of San Antonio. But as i was drawing and painting from direct observations it became more apparent that the real story of the missions has not been fully provided. These structures were intentionally designed for complete domination. With each drawing and painting I could sense by even the placement on the landscape, that these massive clunky buildings were machines for spiritual conversion and for exploiting land and human labor.
During the process of each painting that I completed, it was in each brush stroke that I was thinking about how in a romantic approach, I was documenting something else other than ‘the pretty missions’. I was painting the remains of an old empire. There are stories that have not been shared or released about the real beginnings. Or stories of what life was before the empire. Or even stories about when the empire faded away. What we do know is that there were franciscans, mounted military armies, neophytes, aquaducts, mestizos, and corn----lots of corn. I want to know the detailed stories of revolt, famine, pandemics, abused women, neglected children, imprisoned men, escapes, ‘indian attacks’, ‘indian battles’, rebellion leaders, and difficulties with conversions. I know the stories are out there, we just have to keep digging, and i guess painting.
