Audio guided tour of Madonna of the Harvest

The Madonna of the harvest is very dear to me. And I, I care for it a lot. From my early childhood, my family had a great devotion and love of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And so we we would often say the prayer of the Hail

Mary in the Rosary. And so there's a strong connection with her life, connecting us to the life of Jesus, the life of Christ. I always felt that my drawing was so inadequate that I couldn't really portray the depth that I felt in the, the reverence and

the beauty of the Madonna, the spiritual beauty of the Madonna. But I really wanted to show her as a person that understood poverty that understood what it was like to be an immigrant and a refugee and that she understood what it was like to work hard

in the fields, to grow food and to um help her family have food on the table and have proper living place. I bordered the Madonna with scenes of workers that are doing the the work of taking care of the land and growing food and helping each

other. Look at these little scenes very carefully and you'll see like everyday life, the ordinary things that people have to do to, to live and to survive in the world. But still today, people work very hard to survive. I tried to make the fields with lots

of color. They look like they're plowed farmlands. There's even a, a shepherd on the left and a cow on the, on the right. And people bringing uh are the first fruits of their harvest to present to the Madonna in the Madonna. I, I used the, the

clothing and the cloak of the virgin of Guadalupe who is very dear to me and to my family. Uh Look at the way I was trying to capture a sky. I uh it's an unusual sky for me. The way I portrayed the sky. Look at that

very carefully. It's kind of delicate and there's uh some unusual work with the silk screening.