MY EVOLVING SENSIBILITIES AND MY FRIEND PEGGY McIntosh

I was raised to consider art that which followed the rules set by European or western culture. I was taught to "look down" on tribal or folk art by the society where I was raised. I have served as a docent in a cultural art museum since 1993. Since then I have learned much about what today we call cultural art and used to be called "primitive" or "folk" art. I have learned and appreciated the cultural art of many countries and I thought I was beyond my childhood training.
During a trip to Guatemala my friend Peggy, also a docent at the museum and I were visiting the main cemetery in the city of Antigua Guatemala. I was there to visit my family's mausoleum. The area had gated gardens with large white structures and statues of angels, Mary, saints and portraits of people. Peggy walked off and headed for the "poor people's" side of the cemetery taking pictures.

I had never been to that side of the cemetery. I figured it was the ugly side of the cemetery. When I caught-up with Peggy. There were rows of walls about 12 feet high that contained niches for the dead sealed with a simple plaque. She drew me closer to one of the walls. I saw nothing but white walls with rows or square plaques, four rows high; she pointed at one of the plaques. It had a crude rectangular metal box attached to the wall below the plaque and some fresh flowers also a candle inside the metal box. Above, there was a plaque. It was a crude piece of square metal that had been once the top of a can that once housed 50 pounds of lard.

On this flat sheet of metal an artist had painted a scene of a little girl on her death bed with her family kneeling at the sides of the bed praying. Above the child, a large angel hovering with wings spread waiting to escort the little girl to heaven.
This image was very moving to me. The main colors were blue, cool white, and gray with just a tad of pink-lilac The scale of the figures was good; the perspective was like Cezane's peaches on a table as if the viewer is above looking down.

Peggy talked simpatheticaly about the painting, pointing to the details and how it was very likely that the people who placed this memorial for their loved-one couldn't afford it, but made the sacrifice. Crude, naive and unusual in a surrealistic way but I saw for the first time a beauty that went beyond a loyal adherence to the elements of art and design. It was spontaneous, expressive and, delightful-- what today I feel art should be. Thanks Peggy.