"You can tell an artist by his studio. But you can’t tell him much. You can’t tell him that it’s in the wrong place, that he’s better off relocating to a major metropolitan area where his art can be appreciated by the masses. You can’t tell him that nobody will ever discover the work hidden here, in a foreign country, far from the tourist scene, on a dusty hill overlooking a poor man’s barrio built around a cemetery with its cavalcade of crosses and crypts, backed by bone-dry mountains under a cerulean sky, a desert tableaux handsomely framed by the studio’s brick-trimmed arches. You swivel around in a 1950s office chair, taking in this austere sanctum: a half dozen easels displaying a thematic work in progress, vivid watercolors, charcoal sketches, a swath of mural. Sculptures hang like crucifixions above the artist, who works with an economy of motion. A dab here, he steps back to contemplate. A dab there, followed by a sip of bitter coffee. The smell of smeared oil permeates the air. Paintings take form over months, inspired from sketches tacked to the walls, in turn gleaned from the artist’s documentative photographs, a winnowing that threshes movement down to its essential grace – vignettes of everyday life caught in amber. Each work is a singular vision of life that is both epic and stoic and endowed with a kind of Sisyphean dignity. Maybe it’s a vision that is unattainable in Los Angeles or New York or any other place where artists feed off of each other. And then you admit that maybe this studio is right where it needs to be."

Charles Kulander (author of West Mexico, from Sea to Sierra).