Tanya Torres  
Art for Love, Peace and Joy

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene A month has passed as if it were just a few hours. It was a month of reorganizing, cleaning my space, and strengthening myself for the year. Because I was traveling during the New Year, it was really hard to get back and start over. And first, I cleaned my studio and reorganized my materials, a necessary ritual for a good start. The time has come to return here, with my prayers of gratitude to the Magdalene for her ongoing companionship and i

In my house in Puerto Rico, a wood carving of Mary Magdalene by traditional Puerto Rican saint carvers Barbara Díaz and Marta Rodriguez Olmeda. Hello from Puerto Rico! I have been here a few days, a time I gave myself for thinking, decompressing, earthing, and enjoying the very simple things that life has to offer. Just a few days to remember, create new thoughts and find brief moments of a different silence. The green that surrounds my house soothes my soul. Tree planted in

Yesterday’s drawing of Mary Magdalene Today’s writing… I went through this so many times this year! After writing and editing a post, I get this message. It’s usually when I haven’t assigned a title and the auto save is not working properly. But I forget sometimes, and this happens. As I used to tell my son when he was young and had a bad day: Tomorrow will be a good day!!!! I had a good day, so losing a post is just a minor annoyance. Magdalene blessings to anyone who sees t

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene I needed more rest than usual this week, and the whole week passed before I was able to sit down to draw. Finally today I was free and was able to work on this drawing and some projects. The new year approaches and my mind is looking toward the future. And also back to this year. Even though I’m exhausted, I did manage to have a good six months where I completed several projects and emerged out of the intertia I had been experiencing for suc

Continued progress Progress may not be noticeable, but this painting has an extra 4 hours of work from the last version I posted here. It’s a slow process to finish a painting. I only worked on the face, the foot, the hand and the hair. Now it needs to dry again before painting another layer. The last month of the year is here. It’s been a long year of work, thinking, dreaming and hoping. I have been working on rebuilding the bases of my art practice. It’s a process that beco

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