The Buenos Aires pictures. This is the first painting I did there. More to come

Temperley Buenos Aires 11"x14" oil on mounted linen

On the outskirts of the center of Buenos Aires are interesting towns that feel very lived in. Visiting Temperley, although very foreign to me, felt familiar. It reminded me, slightly, of Union City, New Jersey, where I lived a few years when I was a pre teen. The streets in both places are worn and cracked, stray dogs roaming around, graffiti(not the "cool" kind that is famous now a days) older cars still functioning and people that just feel so darn neighborly to me. A place sometimes just has a way in presenting itself to me that makes me want to capture it. I believe it was a mixture of this familiarity and the loving hospitality I was experiencing from a part of my wife's family. I was staring at this corner the morning after a night of gorging on an incredible "parrillada" and several glasses of Fernet and Coke. This area felt very much like home to me. I can not wait to visit again.

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My dearest and son

A Memoir of sorts Part 1.

I come from a background of divorce and grit. My young mother, with dreams bigger than her reality, married a much older man. He was an airline pilot in Cuba, his third marriage, and I’d be the last of his many kids. He was 64 when I was born, my mother in her early thirties. The man was tired, worn out. They divorced when I was three, in New Jersey. Immigrants, scraping by with hard work and blue-collar jobs. My father took whatever work he could find, mostly driving trucks. The communists in Cuba had torpedoed any real chances for future success in the United States. My two brothers and I ended up on public assistance. Then my mother started dating another man, and that’s when the real chaos began. Drugs and alcohol stormed into our lives, ushering in years of domestic violence, drama, and constant moving. New schools, new roach-infested apartments every six months. One day, a neighbor had a garage sale. We couldn’t afford much, but my eyes lit up when I saw a trunk full of draw...

Art by John Sanchez

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