: Lourdes Morales
Born in Bógota Colombia, Lourdes Morales is a Latina artist. She received a BFA degree in college and studied in ateliers with well-known teachers from Italy, Mexico, and Colombia. She has lived and traveled in Belgium, and Spain, as well as other parts of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, studying classic and contemporary artists. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in Colombia, Spain, Mexico, and New England, including two Amherst Biennials. In Mexico she knew members of Los Fridos (Frida Kahlo’s surviving students). She was very much impressed and influenced by their techniques and their stories about Frida’s life and teachings.
“While living in New England I have been captivated and influenced by the beauty and power of the seasons and the landscapes, which have been conserved, protected, and respected by people and institutions. In this area I feel my work connected not only with the natural phenomena and the elements, but also with the point at which physical and spiritual realities merge. Images and landscapes go into the profoundest thinking that we have.
I am reminded of these parts of Robert Frost’s poem The Birches:
‘So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it …
… Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven …'”