ALFREDO ARREGUIN: A Silent and Colorful Homage to Mother Nature. By M. Nélida Mendoza* 
 

USA [English-Español]: Recognized internationally as one of the greatest artists on the pattern and symbolic painting on canvas, Jose Alfredo Arreguin Mendoza, born in Morelia, Mexico in 1935, has achieved through his efforts and his stУle of capturing his dreams, the cosmos and those who inhabit it, receive many awards for his excellence in the Arts, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, the Humanitarian Award and the Governor's Arts Award by the Washington State, the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Grant, and the Quimbaya Award by Centro Cultural Hispano Americano; that his artistic work be exhibited at the great museums and galleries of the world; and secure himself a place in the history of North American Art.

Amongst these colorful pattern tapestries that form the background of all his work, very similar to the Japanese pictorial forms, Arreguin intertwines his main theme in a magical labyrinth of detailed symbols. We see Mexican historical and artistic icons captured on impenetrable canopies of coiling, curling arabesques, thus creating a fugue-like visual music that binds the wounds of the present with ancestral knots, such as Emiliano Zapata, Miguel Hidalgo, César Chávez y Frida Kahlo, whom he admires the most “for her tenacity.” In his work “The Return to Aztlan,” Arreguín teaches us the importance to return to the past, to conserve it as an essential part of our heritage and intertwines these great leaders who have struggled for the rights of the people with our today’s culture. He has also depicted the Lady of Guadalupe, showing Her in all her humbleness and beauty guiding the people of Mexico as She does in “Mexican People folk songs,” where she, surrounded by Zapata and his horse, is presented as the Queen of the world, a mythical figure amongst the clouds. In some of his works, he depicts objects of the Mexican Pre- Columbian cultures, such as the hunting masks from the ancient Mesoamerican cultures. In “Our Lady of the Jungle,” Arreguín shows us a Virgin asking for mercy on behalf of the jungle. SanFrancisco de Asis, according to him, “one of my favorite saints” is depicted amongst birds and butterflies, and his right hand appears stigmatized, while in the other is carrying the Cross. Behind him, one can barely glimpse the shadow of the great sacrificial Cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

To rise from obscurity, Arreguin had to overcome many barriers, devoting himself to study, and now that he is on the summit, he has dedicated himself to donate part of his work for the students’ scholarships and to different important USA museums and galleries, and as he explains, managing to survive has not been easy: “Donating is important to me. Now it’s not the ego, which is what we have in order to be able to rise. We mainly begin with the ego, and it’s easy to get hurt. Isn’t it? That’s life; the artist’s life is rejection, and one must be strong to continue struggling. Fortunately, it has been more than thirty years that my art has supported us; thus, I have had that great freedom that many Latin American artists don’t have, because they have another job, and I didn’t want that, because I was a waiter and after work, to paint so tired is very difficult. Isn’t it? That’s why I did the master's degree at the UW to back my work, because with the degrading of our race here, it’s easy to say, ‘they don’t know what they are doing.’ So, with an education, with a foundation in this country, people see us differently. Isn’t it? And it’s what has allowed me to enter many places, like the Smithsonian.”

During the last four decades, Arreguin has become the master by excellence in depicting the exotic and lush splendor of the jungle of his native land and of the Pacific Northwest, where he lives since 1956. He decided to stay and says that for him as well as for the other artists, “it makes it difficult for us to return to our native land. They don’t want us much, because they believe that we have betrayed our country.” And regarding discrimination, he says that like all, he also had to struggle against this: “Well, it’s something that is in our subconscious, because we all now, the way we talk about it, it always deals with that also. For me it wasn’t that bad, because I had many contacts and friends. I believe I was the only Latin American at that time in this region, so I didn’t feel it much.” And from his modest house in Seattle, where he lives with his wife Susan, who just like their daughter Lesley, share his successes, is that this humble, extraordinary and prolific artist conceives the most intrinsic through his dreams. He has committed himself directly with the world and with his ancestral world to teach through his art. His expressive creativity lies in knowing how to integrate those important people of history in the vegetable and artistic kingdom of his ancestors, as part of a puzzle, of a kaleidoscope, of a world that must be rescued.

Early in his career, Arreguin knew what he wanted and how he was going to achieve it, and that’s why he created an identity and a unique way of painting, capturing his ancestral elements and combining them with ancestral elements from other cultures, and with significant elements acquired from the present history, because “we are so much connected with the past. We cannot move forward if we don’t look back. An example is our music; when I go to Morelia, the same song is still playing, and after having left so many years ago, we can continue with the same conversation. But we need new materials, and need to take risks and that’s what I’m doing now. I know where I’m going. It’s important to create new things.”

His inspiration sources to achieve these masterpieces are complex in themselves as are the artworks. Everything comes from the innate passion for the arts, from his roots, and according to him, “my art has sprout from all my experiences, from my Mexican culture, also the assimilation of this country’s culture and my trips abroad; all these have provided me with many things that interest me in relation to my art. Isn’t? Well, it’s a mixture of many cultures. Many things fascinate me: more important than anything else is the mystery of life. Isn’t?”

Many people have asked him to paint their dreams and generally he had to reject them, because for an artist, it’s difficult to create exactly what’s inside someone else’s head, but “I’ve told them that they’re going to have to learn to paint. I don’t like to do commission work. I paint all the time. There was someone from Seattle who wanted me to do a painting with fishes and I told him, ‘let me see what I can do.’ When it was finished and showed it to him, he was pleased. It was my own interpretation and he told me: ‘It’s exactly what I wanted.’ Because you know, Nelida, painting is very spiritual. I get inside the painting.” And his work is indeed a revelation.

Arreguin’s art is being included in many educational books to help children receive a more broaden education, and very happy he comments that “I’m a jewel to them, especially for the teachers who now have so many Latin children and want them to get interested in the arts; so they are looking for all literature, arts and all those materials, and my images are coming out in educational publications, because they are very suitable for children’s interests. It’s a thing that is not obviously a political manipulation or a Chicano Politics.”

Generous as his mother and his maternal grandparents, Arreguin is always thinking of helping his community. “The Return to Aztlan,” in which he depicts the icons of Emiliano Zapata, leader of the Mexican Revolution, Jose Maria Morelos and Miguel Hidalgo -both leaders in the war of the Mexican Independence-, accompanied by César Chavez and Dolores Huerta, leaders of Farm Workers Movement, which he donated to the Smithsonian, will be, like many of his works, in permanent exhibition at the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, and the reason why he donated them is because of “the Diversity of individuals who have shaped and continue to shape the beautiful mosaic of our society and culture.” When speaking about this work and why he created it, he tells me that “One of my long-term goals has been precisely to pay homage to men and women that, through their activism, artistic creations, and other forms of dedication have defended or given voice to the plight of less fortunate, and, by extension, attempted to save our planet.”

Regarding his relation and denomination of who is he indeed and to figure out or give a name to his artwork, be that as a Chicano or Mexico-American, Arreguin clarifies that he doesn’t consider himself either one, because “Well, talking about these subject is very problematic for me,’ and adds that “I’m very individualistic.” When Peter Rodriguez invited him to exhibit at the Mexican Museum of San Francisco, and was going to place him at the Chicano Room, he says that people don’t really intellectually understand that he cannot consider himself a Chicano, because “I don’t paint Chicano stУle, I rather paint to the stУle of what I bring in my suitcases from Mexico, and from all my lived experiences, my education and my ancestors. But at the same time, I try, because everything is connected in the world -nature and politics- and we’re all connected one way or another. Therefore my connection with the Chicanos is that I cannot deny the time I’ve remained here, in which I’ve assimilated many things of this culture. So, when I place Cesar Chavez as an icon, –who I admire very much- because he has struggled for the cause of our people who live in this country. Isn’t? Then, that way I don’t’ feel like an impostor who is trying to do this to ingratiate myself with them or something like that; I simply want to paint and use themes that are very important and related with the experience that I’ve had living here in this country as an artist.”

Remembering the best experiences of his childhood and why coincidences exist and destiny of life, Arreguin narrates how one day, professor Lauro Flores, the author of his book about his work: Alfredo Arreguin, Patterns, Dreams and Nature, went to visit him alter having met him: “Lauro is an incredible man, because I met him about fifteen years ago. He came to my house, and I was talking to him and told him: ‘When I was a child about six years old and I was going to school, but we had to go to say goodbye to my grandfather who was going to the mountains to work; he was a bookkeeper, and when the train arrived, and he went up, I told him: ‘Take me with you, grandpa.’ And he took me and brought me up to the train and we left, and when the train arrived to its destiny, there were some cowboys on horses and they gave me my own horse and we went through all the mountains, and arrived at a village that was around these mountains and a river. And it was like a dream. Its name was Canoa. And I told him: ‘It’s the most grateful experience, I had in all my childhood. It’s what I always remember of my childhood,’ and I told him, but ‘No one knows where is Canoa’ and Lauro said: ‘I’m from Canoa.’ Nelida, I got goose pimples. And another thing, when he wrote the book, he said: ‘Alfredo, I used to live three blocks from where you lived in Morelia,’ then he said: ‘When I see your paintings, I remember our house…it had the corridor and all the mosaics, and my mother had bird cages and flower plants all around. So every time I see your, I want to get in them to return to my house in Morelia.’ He has this myth with flowers. Those are the things that I can share with persons like you, Nelida, with people that knows, who has that sensitivity, because people here write the same article that they have already read.” If we observe the totality of Arreguin’s work, we can deduce that he is an artist committed ecologically, because of the dimension that he projects about nature. In itself, all his nature paintings are an exhortation, so that mankind conserves the environment. With it, he teaches us to closely look, to find each element, each color, each pattern; he makes us enter in his labyrinth, his magic world. He remembers how nature has influenced him to be what he is today: “My first contact with nature, with the rain forest, took place in Mexico when I was a teenager. The magnificence of the jungle—the richness of its plants, flowers, birds and other animals— impressed me immensely. There was something powerful, magical and mysterious in it that fascinated me and demanded my respect.

”Once he ended up in the Pacific Northwest, years later, “I became confronted with a different landscape that also includes a rain forest—not unlike the one that nurtured the childhood and the senses of the great Pablo Neruda, and which he celebrated frequently in his poetry, and also in his autobiography where he says that, “Anyone who hasn't been in the Chilean forest doesn't know this planet.”

Sadness invaded him to see how the beautiful nature of his childhood had disappeared: “Many years later I returned to Mexico and visited Guerrero, where I had my early experiences with the jungle. Everything was gone. My heart sunk when I saw that the forest had been paved over. Resorts had been developed all over the place. Concrete high rises now dominated the land. And then I realized that this trend of ecological destruction was taking place all over the world, most notably in the delicate Amazonian region.”

As a painter, he has become the colorful and silent voice of the jungle, the voice of nature: “My works, in particular my Jungles and Madonnas series —but also those that depict the Pacific Northwest— are a celebration of the ecology, part of the homage I pay to nature. And so are some of the icons I have painted as tributes to some ecologists and environmental activists that have courageously defended Mother Nature against the intrusion of the industrial world: Chico Mendes, Hazel Wolf, Paulino Paikán. In similar fashion, my Madonnas, too, are defenders of nature. I paint them not for religious purposes, but to convey a spiritual feeling about saving the rain forest.”