Tanya Torres  
Art for Love, Peace and Joy

Painting is still in progress. I spent the day painting, back to the painting in progress that I have been working on this month. I changed several things in it and… there probably will be more changes. It still needs a lot of work, but it’s getting closer. It is at this point that a painting requires trust and faith. It’s the moment when it’s not working, when it’s tempting to let it go and start over with a white canvas. But after so much work, one becomes reluctant to let

Yesterday’s drawing of Mary Magdalene Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene I was planning to write yesterday, but my mother in law visited me in my studio, and I ended up just listening to her. It was Thanksgiving Day after all, and she is someone to whom I owe much gratitude. She was the person who took care of my son when I went back to work, who took care of me when I was sick, and who took us in, the whole family and later on the two cats, when we had to leave our house. She

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene In art, patterns help us give rhythm, interest and variety to a work of art. They fill areas, they make our eyes move around the piece. Patterns repeat, take us back to the beginning, and make us stay with the piece. They are pleasurable to the eye because they are predictable. By breaking a pattern we can also break the rhythm, on purpose. Unpredictability is also pleasing to the mind. It invites the imagination to create. Sometimes we are o

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene I have to admit that as I age, I have been feeling less passion in general. It reminds me of my father, who around my age, felt similarly. All his previous life, he had been a passionate man who developed many projects and whose enthusiasm was so contagious that he would easily recruit people, including me since I was a child, to help him turn his ideas into reality. In his 50s, I suspect, he was feeling like I feel these days, not wanting to

Drawing from yesterday, continued today, more work tomorrow. I have a list of symbols, simple things I want to give the Magdalene. It’s a long list, that means a lot of paintings. Some I have painted before, but there’s always room for new interpretations. Some are hard to paint and make universal, like my little house in Puerto Rico. Universal is important to me. There are things that we all like and revere just because we are humans on Earth. Like a bird, a heart, roses. Li

Painting in progress I wish I had one more weekend day! But it’s back to work tomorrow. I do in a weekend as much as possible, which is never enough, but is more than I was doing before. One brushstroke at a time, I have 3 watercolors and one painting in progress. And 2 drawings. My list was much longer, but I do what I can. The most important action of the day(s) was starting the right way, with meditation and joy to live one more day. When you have been close to death, appr

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene My studio smells of the past, of early days in my college’s painting studio, and of old days before fully launching myself as an artist. I closed the door of my studio so the smells will remain a little longer. I don’t think of the past too much, this is just a coincidence, part of 2 works in progress that contain the same materials as those past times. But it’s comforting to find that the memories remind me of the essence of who I am. That

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene If this were a drawing for a painting, I would work it and rework it until the eyes lined up, and the outline was clear, and the proportions were better. But it’s just a drawing I made to keep my promise as much as possible of drawing Mary Magdalene every day. It’s also a moment to be in my studio, connect the mind, and remember myself after a long day of work. For that, it’s perfect, even if it is imperfect. There are moments for perfectioni

Today’s drawing of Mary Magadalene Lately, I find myself without words, or at least, only with words that don’t quite fit here. My studio is filled with images of Mary Magdalene, items that remind me of this journey, and examples of routes to explore as I go. I struggle to stay on task because there is so much I want to do and write about, and think about. And then the day is over, I do the best I can, and get ready for another round. It’s not a bad life, but it’s not exactly

Many years ago, I wrote about the tears of Mary Magdalene . It was the last post about the last painting of Mary Magdalene in the first series I painted. The series culminated in her tears, tears of much more than pain. Tears are the main attribute of the Magdalene in art. Her tears tell us about the pain and about the liberation to be experienced when we face love and death. Her tears are transformative. Mary Magdalene’s Tears , oil painting in progress. And it is transform