Inner Peace on a Wall

 

Back at CasaSito! This is one of my favourite NGOs in Antigua Guatemala. For years now, it has been supporting Guatemalan youth through partial scholarships, psychosocial support, personal development workshops, and extracurricular activities in the departments of Sacatepéquez, Alta Verapaz, and Quiché.

Back in 2015 I had the honour to paint two murals in some very rural areas in Cobán. In February 2019 we painted a mural at the patio of the new CasaSito headquarters in Panorama, Antigua (see video at bottom), followed in May by another mural of a design that was the result of a series of workshops with the participants of CasaSito’s art program. Later that month we painted with the same students a community mural in San Cristobal El Alto.

Last year CasaSito moved to a new location in Antigua, so I got the call... (Oh how I love it when they move as soon as there are no longer any walls to paint!) The wall at the new headquarters was even bigger and better… A little over 3 meters high and 27 meters long. Hurray!

In the middle of the wall, the art students and their teacher Fernando Azurdia had painted a black tree that represents the organization, with small tiles with the names of the main sponsors. Nice, but the wall could use something more. Alice Lee, the founder of CasaSito, who is forever “retiring”, asked me to come up with a design that reflects the goals of the organization and that is at the same time space-enlarging, visually pleasing, soothing and relaxing. And to involve the students in the whole process!

The Antigua branch of CasaSito has developed in different ways from the Cobán office, while both continue to have the provision of scholarships as the main goal. In Cobán the needs of the students are mostly about the lack of basic needs, whereas the staff in Antigua noticed there was more need for emotional support. Some of the issues the staff have been addressing are depression, conflicts within the family, low self-esteem, anxiety, panic, and eating disorders. It was the latter issues that Alice asked me to address in the design. But in a constructive and positive way that represents support of mental wellbeing, in such a manner that the students could identify with it. And all of it in a very subdued gamma of six tints and tones of grey/blue/teal, a far cry from my usual eyepopping choice of the brightest colours on the spectrum.

I decided to use the “Matisse approach” and gave a presentation to the 17 participants of the art program about the fabulous French painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954). His colourful paintings still resonate with people today, even with young people in Guatemala. But it was his famous cut outs I wanted to focus on, those marvellous, brightly coloured shapes he started cutting out when, by the end of World War II, well in his seventies, he was confined to his bed after having surgery for bowel cancer. The cutouts are so simple but so poetic at the same time. They are open to interpretation and seem to dance against their backgrounds.

After the presentation we talked about mental health and what factors help support mental wellbeing. The students wrote them down and it was interesting to see how their answers where different, although not contradictory to, the ideas the staff has. Whereas staff member referred to states of mind like “inner peace”, “personal freedom” and “personal growth”, the answers of the students were more practical: Hang out with friends, listen to music, read a book, practice sport, be outside in nature.

The next step was to try to visualise these concepts into shapes, while avoiding clichés, like a heart shape representing love. I had provided six different tones of blue paper, so the colour palette was limited. I encouraged the students to create shapes open to interpretation and to use form and lines to express their emotions. For example, ragged hard lines to express anger versus smooth undulating lines that might express smoothness, continuity etc.

When finished, I asked each of the three groups of students to make a collage of their cutouts on strips of white paper that represented the wall. I thought the results were really good! There were some interesting concepts here and there and plenty of beautiful shapes that I could work with.

I took photos of the students results and isolated different shapes. I then made a collage of it all in Photoshop, with the exact dimensions of the wall. The result is a design that goes from left to right, from the entrance into the heart of the building, from anger and frustration to peace and tranquillity.

A week later it was time to start the actual painting. But first we needed to draw a grid with chalk. I drew the baseline and explained how from that line we needed levelled horizontal and vertical lines at a distance of 25cm. Not really complicated, but if you put a bunch of adolescents together, you get a lot of chatter and very little grid. Besides, the squares were getting bigger and bigger, which beat the whole point of course. But after some erasing and a second attempt, we managed to get the grid on the wall as well as some paint.

Since I had little time to spare, the whole plan was for me to make the design and have the students execute it, under the guidance of their art teacher, finishing it before my departure from Guatemala. But there were some delays, so Alice and I decided to give the painting a head start, starting early on Thursday while the students would help in the afternoon. The painting went well and we got a lot done. About a week later, I had already left by then, Fernando the art teacher sent me a video of the result. It looked wonderful! It was strange, not to be there for the grand finale, but wonderful at the same time too. Inciting youth to create (or finish, in this case) their own murals has always been the aim of my project MuralArte Guate.

Congratulations to the students, Fernando, Alice and the rest of the staff! Looking forward to come back!

Video of the result: 

Previous mural (explanation in Spanish):