"El Chavalo Con Su Burro" (The Boy and His Donkey)

Original photo

Today is a momentous day. I received delivery of the painting in the opposite column.

The picture on the left was taken by a local photographer. I bought the color version of the photo and asked a local artist, Patricio Marin, to reinterpret the photo focusing on the boy and his donkey. The two had come into town for a parade of donkeys, designed to raise awareness about the importance of this animal to local farmers.

The artist has captured perfectly the comfortable relationship between the two. The boy´s face clearly shows a somewhat worn and jaded perspective, appropriate for someone way beyond his youthful years. His secondhand T'-shirt with the word "roar" (something he would probably never do), his Yankee cap and his one pair of "new jeans", which would only ever be worn on very special occasions, tell us a lot about his life, local culture...and the migration of second hand clothes from the US to street markets in Las Segovias.

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"El Chavalo Con Su Burro" (oil on canvas, 31.5"x39")