Off Season Mexico City

View from Hotel Isabel

Hola! From Mexico City in the Off Season. Mid-June is their rainy season, and it is mild weather (mostly cloudy and some rain, not cold) and fantastic in terms of a paucity of tourists. Despite the city itself having 10 million people and the outer areas another 10 million, i find it be to fairly mellow. A lot is going on, but no one seems in too much of a rush. People seem present as a matter of course. There is a flow. I find the culture to be very different from the U.S. That’s why I travel; to feel another way of living.

The above watercolor was done in two sittings from the door of my roof top room at Hotel Isabel in Centro Historico. My room is a convenient location and I like the view because of the two contrasting towers: In the foreground is the tower of the Museo de Cancilleria (a repurposed monastery, now a museum of contemporary art) , and in the background is a ginormous cell tower that looks like a soviet era wet dream in terms of it’s brutalist design.

In the distance are mountains hung wtih clouds, and the geometry of the angled horizontal building shapes contrasts the vertical forms of the towers and the foreground wall on the left. City scenes are often but a puzzle of geometric shapes that you light and give atmosphere to.

But there is aslo a sound to this painting; the view is but rooftops, but from the streets below the eternal hum of city life seeps upward: Traffic, horns, vendors barking their wares on loudspeakers, a siren.

There is so much to see in this city peppered with museums and historical building and markets and shopping zones and parks. It is a bit overwhelming and sometimes difficult to just sit in one spot and work on one image, when you daily walk through a sea of evocative images everywhere you go.

This is a dilemma I often face at the beginning of my travels. It takes awhile to settle in and get beyond the overwhelm. To get into the ritual of a daily art practice; a meditation. I have but a week here and tomorrow is my last day. Short, but always worth it.