Week 8: Carmen Lomas Garza

            Carmen Lomas Garza is an amazing artist who has accomplished many great works of art through out her many years. In the process of her long career she also created a series of books for children that represent and depicts the Mexican-American culture through a series of her art paintings that tells the story of her childhood memories while growing up in Texas. One painting in particular that I much enjoyed was the Tamalada painting. I found myself quickly relating to the Tamalada painting because it quickly reminded me of my family’s New Year tradition; A tradition in which we make tamales as a family with a joint effort from all my aunts, my grandma, and cousins to create a feast of tamales ending the year the right way.

            In our two-day tamale event we make our family favorites, which are candy and meat tamales. We celebrate the ending of the year and give thanks our health and the love of our family, while eating our tamales on New Years Eve.

            Carmen painting depicts this quite well; this unity of family coming together, working together, and celebrating together while making tamales inspires the looker to reflect inward while thinking about ones own traditions and family gathering moments. The beautiful color section that she uses in this painting immediately draws you into the art piece. Although one could analyze the piece in more detail, I decided just to speak on the very first emotion one thinks about which is family.