Born in Fort Worth, Texas, I am a child of Mexican immigrants. From a young age, I’ve enjoyed creating art—weaving, watercolor, mixed media, and recently acrylic painting. Nonetheless, art had been a sideline to a lifelong career in public health and epidemiology. Now retired, time allows me to paint with purpose and passion.
The story of my parents’ journey to the US has been a point of pride among our family. I wrote a book about their journey from Mexico to Texas and our family’s early years in America. The book, published shortly after my mother’s death in 2019, was edited by a journalist friend. With me not being able to afford her professional services, she bartered her skills for a painting—the subject matter left to me. At the time, my thoughts were on my mother, her life, and our world as youngsters. Experiencing her loss conjured up her kitchen, her endless tasks making tortillas and foods of her native land, her traditional tools to grind the corn—molcajete, the vegetables from her garden, the Navidad tradition of making tamales, and her stove. So, I filled my canvas with these memories—the figure of a young woman doing the work, thereby producing joy in the form of flowers flowing from her skirt.
I’m not a professional painter, strictly amateur, still learning. Still, I was loathed to give up the painting, but a deal was a deal. I normally take a photo of my paintings using my iPhone for my beginning portfolio. But for this painting, I took it to Miller, specifically to Dana, to preserve it in the best image possible. I am grateful to Dana, who made sure that the colors, particularly, the red in the skirt was true to the original painting.
-Lucina Suarez
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