original painting by Brooke Harker, 2011.
I fell in love with a photograph of Tijuana so I bought it, put it on my shelf and
looked at it for about 6 years. It made me happy. I wanted to contact the
photographer to tell him how much I loved the photo, but then I couldn’t read his
signature. I suppose I could try to track him through the gallery, but I never did.
His work became a springboard for me to create an abstracted interpretation of
Tijuana, broken into the two parts “Tijuana Tandum 1 & 2.” It was my hope that with
all the love and energy I felt as I created this, that some of it might travel to Tijuana
and offer healing to the people who needed it most. I created these two paintings in
the sunlight with so much joy. I think this was the first time I began to see the beauty
in power lines, when most of my life I wanted them to disappear. I imagined what it
would be like to see the earth before settlement. As a child, I often found place outside
and pretended civilization didn’t exhist, that the world looked as it might have, long
before modern conveniences. My perspective has shifted quite a bit since then…
and now I’m looking at the beauty of what is…instead of what I want it to be…
Many people have asked if this was the Flavels in Brazil. My thought is, can’t it
just be wherever a person wants it to be if it is an abstraction inspired by a real
place?
Brooke Harker
