display paintings

Traveling side-by-side, a couple of young betta fish swim together in this painting from Bali. Mahmud paints this composition, capturing the bettas in hues of red, blue, white, and orange. The male betta displays elaborate fins while the female is more modest, yet rich in spots of color. Says Mahmud, "Betta fish are beautiful fish; even though they are small, their colors are awesome. All of their fins can be opened wide like a flower. Each betta fish has a different color, like yellow, red, blue, white, and other mixed colors."

Traveling side-by-side, a couple of mature betta fish swim together in this painting from Bali. Mahmud paints this composition, capturing the bettas in hues of red, blue and white. The male betta displays elaborate, frilly fins while the female is more modest, yet rich in hues of blue. Says Mahmud, "Betta fish are beautiful fish; even though they are small, their colors are awesome. All of their fins can be opened wide like a flower. Each betta fish has a different color, like yellow, red, blue, white, and other mixed colors."

With colorful flowers blossoming on its shell, this turtle captivates with psychedelic artistry. Zeny and Reyna craft this endearing alebrije sculpture with techniques inherited from their parents. They carve a found piece of copal wood into the statuette and proceed to paint it with hand crafted artistry.

Alebrijes are a fairly recent Mexican art form, attributed to Pedro Linares. Unconscious due to illness in 1936, he was presumed near death and yet his dreams were extremely vivid. He tells of a place where all was peaceful and quiet until all of a sudden there appeared a lion with an eagle’s head, a rooster with bull's horns and a donkey with butterfly wings. They kept screeching "alebrije, alebrije!" and Ricardo began running away. He encountered a man who told him it was not yet his time to be there are and he should continue running towards the exit. In this dream Pedro climbed out of a window and regained consciousness. He made paper replicas of these creatures to show everyone, and soon others began to craft other "monster-like" creatures in bright colors.