While reading Constance Cortez’s book on Carmen Lomas Garza, I was drawn particularly to the etching of her family’s matriarch, her grandmother Elisa Lomas titled Abuelita c. 1972. As someone who has taken many studio courses over the past couple years, still life drawings are one of my favorite methods that I still utilize in my artwork. I think that in this particular etching, with its plain strokes and uniqueness in the texture to render her grandmother’s skin, I find it incredibly complex of the subject’s personality. The method that Garza I'm guessing she used here, stippling, is something that I am familiar with in my years of training. The stippling here creates texture, skin color, volume and accentuates Mrs. Lomas’ figure, bringing it out more as she’s composed in her chair.
It reminds me of the realist oil portrait of James Whistler titled Whistler’s Mother c. 1871, except Garza’s sensitivity to rudimentary lines and stippling here have created a modest illustration that holds her memory and symbolic trinkets she held value to (e.g. a saint, a candle, an image of the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos). And then there’s the rosary she literally grasps in her right hand, hidden beneath the folds of her dress that drapes over her stomach. Through this image, Garza has embodied a memory she held of her grandmother while simultaneously accentuating parts of her that “tended to her family’s needs”. I would translate this description into a head that’s positioned upright, facing forward, possibly to the future with a strong sense of both worry (from her slightly furrowed brow line), but also awareness. And through her hands, a physical attribute that she carried her family to where they were and being able to rest assured, comforted by her religious tokens that she carefully places on an altar next to her.
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