Painting in the Soul Presence of My Ancestors

When I paint, I can often sense the spirits of my ancestors and my dearly departed relatives, moving around me. Their souls guide me in the mixing of colors on my pallet, inspire the strokes of my brush. They help me, along with the angels, in my effort  to glorify God through my artwork, however humble my attempt may be. The four photographs in the first row above, are of my mother's two sets of grandparents. Unfortunately, we have not been able to locate any images of my father's grandparents. We do know, however, that my father's grandparents were as colorful as were my mother's. 

There was one lost photo of my father's paternal grandmother, Clemencia Figueroa. She was a Siboney "Indian," a native Cuban. Her husband, José Rodríguez (my paternal great grandfather), was a Pardo Libre. "Pardo" is a Spanish word which best translates to "brown." Pardo Libre meant "free colored person." It was a term which was used in the Spanish Colonies of the Caribbean to classify free people of mixed African-European and African-Amerindian heritage.

Across the waters in Jamaica, my father's mother, Harriet Bernard, was born of a Black Jamaican woman, Caroline Dyce, and a White British stagecoach designer named William Bernard. Caroline was a house servant in William Bernard's mansion. As a child, my grandmother Harriet looked longingly alongside her mulatto brothers, from outside the gates of the Bernard estate, as their unknowing white siblings frolicked in their silk stockings and bow ties within the iron bars. Such unions, from which I and so many have descended, helped spawn the endemic self-loathing, subconsciously engrained in the psyche of so many African slave descendants.

When describing a mulatto of light complexion, disparaging expressions like "adelantado" (meaning  "advanced") are still used among us Cubans. My parents, though embracing of their mixed heritage, say that I got the "pelo malo" (the "bad hair") as opposed to my sister Georgi, who got the "pelo bueno" (the "good hair"). I fault not, however, my ancestors (both Black and White), for having contributed, in their clandestine unions, to this dilemma of subconscious self-deprecation. They were merely victims of an institutionalized evil. Had it not been for their shunned actions, for their unholy unions, I would not be here.

Although I never met my paternal great grand parents in the flesh, I relish the soul dialogue I often experience with them, when I paint. It is invoked sometimes in sadness, other times in laughter, always in joy. The artistic choices that the spirit of my ancestors impel me to make, evoke all sorts of emotions within me. At times, they even leave me laughing.

Recently, while painting a portrait of my maternal great grandfather Chung, I felt Chung's spirit tell me to envelop him in a colorful orange dragon. Chung was a Chinese businessman, living in Jamaica. In an attempt to assimilate into Jamaican culture, Chung sometimes fancied the name "Thomas Thompson." As I began wrapping the dragon around the image of Chung in a western necktie, the spirit of my Jamaican great grandmother, Miss Lou (Chung's companion), interjected. "You better put me in that one too! Paint a tempting ackee fruit, dangling from my fingers tips," Miss Lou demanded. Then Chung retorted, "But make the woman diminutive. Make her about to be clasped by the dragon's claw!" Miss Lou muttered the final word, "Diminutive? Hah! You better keep that claw unclasped, unclasped, I tell you." I ended up laughing so hard that my eyes welled.

As long as I can remember, my family has remarked that I'm the spitting image, both body and soul, of my great grandmother Miss Lou. Vainly, I used to cry as a child, whenever my mother likened me to her feisty Jamaican grandmother, who had fallen in love with a man from China. I didn't want  to end up an old lady like Ms. Lou, with a blissfully senile mind under a big white fro. I simply did not understand how beautiful and beloved my great grandmother was. Like it or not, Miss Lou obviously left a strong impression upon me in my early developmental stages, before I left the island of Cuba while still a toddler. She died while I was in college. There's a very large painting I'm working on now called, "Carnaval en La Calle Trocha." In the center of the work, I'm painting an image of the old "Jamaiquina," Miss Lou, dancing amidst the beat of the Cuban congas in the colorful splendor of the Orishas.

Orishas are spirits who reflect manifestations of Olodumare, meaning God, in Yoruba faith or Ifa. The Yoruba religion found its way from west Africa to the Caribbean and other neighboring colonies on the slave ships. In Cuba and throughout the Caribbean, to avoid persecution by the Spaniards, the Yoruba slaves disguised the names of the Orishas, by replacing them with Catholic Saint names. Ochun, the Orisha of love and maternity, for example, was referred to as Santa Maria de la Caridad. Chango, the Orisha of thunder and lightning, was called Santa Barbara, and so on. This practice of concealing the Orishas behind a facade of Catholic Saint names gave rise to the religion known as Santeria or Lucumí, where elements of Yoruba and Catholicism are mixed into one syncretistic faith.

There is a certain respect for the Orishas found in Cuba, even among those who do not practice the faith. Many Cuban songs, such as the one playing here in the background, call upon the names of the Orishas in Lucumí language. The carnivals, attended by many, are filled with dancers dressed in colors of patron Orishas. When the congas echo in the city streets at night, eliciting ancestral spirits, during the bembes (Yoruba ceremonies), even a Christian Cuban will warn, "Apurate y vete a casa, porque te van a montar los muertos!" That roughly translates to, "You better hurry up on home before the dead trip you up!" I was too young, when I left Cuba, to consciously recall the beat of the drums at night, bouncing between the walls of Santiago, my birth city. I don't remember, as do my parents, how the intimidating sounds of the congas swelled into my bedroom at dusk, from bembes around the corner. When I visited Cuba in 2002, for the first time since I had left the island as a toddler, I realized that my body and soul remembered what my mind could not. Smells and sights triggered strong sensual memories that surfaced from deep within my blood.

Lately, in my artwork, I have been exploring the history of my native Cuban ancestry, Afro-Cuban and Siboney. There's a lot of pain in both of those histories. My Afro-Cuban predecessors survived true tales of horror, while my tortured Siboney ancestors narrowly escaped extermination.  Both of their suffrage arose from the wicked deeds of the Spaniards, my other predecessors.

During Cuba's War of Independence from Spain, my Siboney great grandmother, Clemencia Figueroa, fell victim to the cruel reign of the Spaniards. Her poignant story, along with an artifact found during her demise, was displayed in the National Museum of Cuba. Starved, my great grandmother escaped the concentration camps of Santiago. She absconded with her two of her grandchildren, a boy named Zoilo and his little sister. They were my father's first cousins. The children accompanied their grandmother into the Sierra Maestra Mountains, where they combed the sweltering jungles in search of Clemencia's son, their uncle, my father's father, José Rodríguez Figueroa. José was a Mambi, a soldier in the rebel Cuban insurgent army. He was fighting against the Spanish in the jungles of the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Zoilo recounted to my father that, during their search for their uncle, they stopped at La Catedral Del Cobre, which is nestled in the Sierra Maestra foothills. The cathedral was (and still is) considered a sacred temple. Within its walls has been enshrined, for hundreds of years, a holy relic, the statuette of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Ochun), Cuba's patron Saint.

Hanging on to hope, Clemencia, knocked on the doors of the sacred cathedral, begging for sustenance so she could feed her hungry grandchildren. With no food to be found, the priest turned away the starving trio. Shortly thereafter, weakened by malnutrition, Clemencia stumbled and tumbled down the steep mountainside of the Cobre to her death. Zoilo remembered how his Abuela's eyes rolled up in her head, as he watched her plummet to her death. His sister and he recovered their Abuela's tattered, characteristically Siboney, sandal which had loosened itself from Clemencia's foot early in her fall. The children hung the sandal from a tree, so that upon return with an adult, they would be able to spot the site where their grandmother had perished. The sandal, was the artifact which was displayed with my great grandmother's story in the National Museum of Cuba.

As I paint these subjects, I sense in my soul my emaciated great grandmother's silent sobbing, as she forged fruitlessly with her grandchildren, until death, through the mountain jungles in search of her rebel son. I hear the cries of my Siboney and Taíno native Cuban predecessors as they escaped the cruel clutch of the Conquistadors and victoriously leapt to their deaths from the canyons of Baracoa, yelling in broken Spanish, "Yumuri!" for "Yo muero," which translates to "I die!" I feel the trembling of my female native Cuban ancestors who were hung from their necks over flames in groups of thirteen from makeshift gallows, with their bare breasts, bleeding tears of milk, while they helplessly watched the Spaniards slam their infants' heads against stones and cast lots in laughter as they dismembered their native husbands. I hear the beat of the congas, that invoked the presence of the Orishas who watched over my great grandmother Clemencia, her tortured Siboney ancestors, and her Afro-Cuban husband, whose predecessors had purchased their freedom from slavery.

My ancestors are a driving force in my artistic work. Their spirits have led me to the cusp of a development of a new body of artwork which celebrates the rich rainbow of my very unique and interesting heritage. I pray that the opening of my heart to the soul voices of my predecessors will give birth to a work that speaks the spirit of my ancestry, for it is a spirit that is rich with history, humanity and forgiveness.

Please scroll down to enjoy a beautiful sunset.  My sister Alicia took this picture in 2005, from my parents home on the Mediterranean Coast of Southern Spain, the country where my mother's father, Julio, was born.