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| The new generation of Oaxacan painters |
| Luis Valencia was born in San Antonino, Ocotlán in the Central Valley region of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Birthplace of his mentor and inspriation, Maestro Rodolfo Morales (2002), this town and small district lie less than hour from the city of Oaxaca, a factor which has brought its cultural output permanently in to the spotlight. Luis Valencia's life as an artist started in the fields he used to work as a child. Working the land in order to more successfully produce food for the family, he would often come across small clay figures that had made been made thousands of years before by his direct Zapotec descendants. He told me that he used to feel the man who had made the when he held their work in his hands. He didn't know that they could be sold to make money or that he could learn how to make them himself and make even more. A local artisan offered to show him how and he accepted, becoming the strongest breadwinner in his family before becoming an adolescent. Luis Valencia possesses a huge respect for his race and is a strong believer in oral history. He has told me a number of local stories from the times of the Spanish conquest. Stories of what the only survivor of his town, a little girl, called "shiny men" when having to describe the chainmail-wearing invaders. He learnt such stories from his grandfather who I imagine had learnt them from his. Luis Valencia's talent with ceramic art brought hnim to the attention of great Oaxacan painter, Rodolfo Morales. Maestro Morales found Luis a place at the prestigious Rufino Tamayo workshop in Oaxaca and also took Luis to a library for the first time, he was in his early forties. When I met Luis Valencia he invited me to come to his house. Upon arrival he showed us some paintings he had been getting on with, having recently begun diversified from ceramic art. Together, we named the finished six, you can see my photographs of this process here they had already been sold, in fact they had been bought unseen and paid-for in advance by representatives of Spanish bank Banco Santander. They had seen him give a ceramics seminar in Sulmona, Rome, in 1997 and arrived at his front door in San Antonino to commission fifty pieces. At the end of October 2002 Luis's son Alejandro was fatally wounded by the police while being interrogated at Ocotlaán prison. After two and a half days in a coma, Alejandro died. Luis came to tell me about this only a few days later, on the Friday night of that year's Day of the Dead celebrations. During some of the most emotional moments of my life I had to perform the incredulous task of telling a Oaxacan how lucky he was that his culture expected and respected death so much and that perhaps even for that alone, this tragedy wouldn't push him over the edge. |
 | next L.V. work |
| Luis Valencia | Cabalgandose en el espiritú 2002 |
Colección Banco Santander Shown Barcelona January 2003 |