Three Faces of Frieda
THREE FACES OF FRIDA - THEIR HEARTS BEAT AS ONE
This Painting was inspired by my travels in Mexico and my admiration for the Mexican women artist Frida Kahlo. I am amazed by her incredible life and to honor her I traveled to Mexico City to learn more about her by visiting her house. Walking through Frida’s home Casa Azul ( The Blue House) I was struck by the connection and strength she felt from her ancient roots. The house is decorated with ancient statues of many Mexican cultures. These statues were her inspiration. One of the cultures reflected in her painting of herself is being held in the arms of the Great Mother/Spider Goddess of Teotihuacán. The painting is called “My Nurse and I.” There are many Retablo’s (small wall paintings) filling the house walls calling forth miracles through prayers to the Virgin of Guadalupe who is ever present.
Walking through her home I realized how Frida has drawn strength from all these ideas that filled her house and I felt, filled her heart. This then is a detail of the painting.
DECRIPTION OF THREE PANELS IN PAINTING
ONE: The image on the left side of the painting is the Goddess of Teotihuacán who was the protector of the city of the same name.
Only a two-hour drive from Mexico City this ancient city with two giant pyramids called forth the Sacred Feminine as the main spiritual force of the city. She was also known as Spider women, as creator
weaver of the world. She holds in her hands a mirror to have us look at our own creative power.
Two: In the middle Frida is pictured with her beautiful face and her famous dark eyes staring right at us. Her heart is burning with life, courage and creativity. Her Necklace of thorns that is pictured in her painting called “Self –Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird”, has been replaced with a bow of green leaves showing her growing with life. She is a blend of the two other images inseparable as they are woven inside of her and makes up her creative core of being.
Three: On the far right is the Virgin of Guadalupe in all her splendor. Roses are decorating her dress and she has been covered with growing green leaves. Symbolic of her power to also create life anew. The meaning being she is replacing our fears and limitations with the beauty of love and compassion.
ALL: Who can say where one image stops and the other begins. Frida has become a Goddess in her own right as a women elevated for her mystery, her courage and incredibly rich spirit.
Each image supports one another making their hearts beat as one heart. Making the painting one message. Live your life to the fullest. Follow and spin your dreams into being like the Spider Goddess. Have the courage to overcome your limitations and believe in the power of love to guide you.
Saint Frida Writing
My connection to Frida Kahlo the great Mexican women painter began almost by accident. People that know me know how passionately I feel about her and her work. I find I am often asked to give some kind of explanation about why I love her so much. This then is my sojourn to understanding her power and my own.
I take you on this journey not just to understand something of her life but to open to your own life. One cannot separate Frida from Mexico and the zest and spice that is the culture. As a North American westerner my cool collected take on life melts under the heat of Mexican thinking.
As women we need to free up our energy often trapped inside of us. To know Freda is to seek a path to find inner and outer freedom using life’s trials and difficulties. Where our pain is used as a fuel for liberation, and joy is made all the sweeter from having tasted suffering. I write this to help you find your inner Frida and set you free as it has me.
Library’s before Goggle
When I was sixteen I was an aspiring artist. I realized on my own that I needed to find a hero as a role model for myself that could inspire me. I wanted to find a women artist that had become a great success in her lifetime. Someone to read about and who’s life I could learn from.
I adored my art teacher all tall and elegant and I asked him to help me on my quest. This as primitive as this will sound was before the Internet and Goggle. To find out information you had to use a library and tons of books to find your way through lots of research.
I volunteered in the high school library and I had been methodically going through all the art books we had and we actually had many of them. They were all filled with artists that were brilliant, amazing men. I loved them all don’t get me wrong. Michelangelo was compelling and Claude Monet filled my heart with blue water lilies and joy. Yet they were men and I was in a women’s body. What I wanted, no what I needed was a women painter to point the way to my finding my own inner artists path of creativity.
My art teacher diligently searched his own personal library and came up with the American painter Mary Cassatt who had been befriended by the French Impressionists. I liked her work of course and admired her sacrifices as an 18th century women painter. She painted images of women and children but I just was not entirely satisfied. The pastel world of painted babies being bathed and ladies sitting in chairs was too placid for my sixteen-year-old mind that loved Twiggy and Jefferson Starship and Granny glasses.
Was this it, was this all, I asked? He was confounded and I knew he had done all that he could. His time was limited and he had given me Cassata however I was still hungry for more. I had to begin the hunt again.
Next I turned to the head librarian. She wore orthopedic shoes and lived with four cats and let her hair go grey. Underneath it all though she burned with the fire and power of knowledge. Books were her passion, her husband, and her lover. When I asked her what I was looking for she connected to me immediately. For weeks she toiled over trying to find books on women artists in history. It was not her field and she was dancing in the dark. Yet she danced for me in her search. It began to dawn on me how hard this search was to find a recognized women artist in 1966.
I will never know what contortions she went through but she produced one book borrowed on an inter-library loan and sent through the mail from the Library of Chicago. It was thick and it was on Latin American artists. It was 99% about male artists but one page stood out. In a large beautiful chapter on the work of Muralist Diego Rivera I saw a tiny footnote and one single image that took up a whole page.
Made, as a glossy color plate that they don’t do anymore in books. The page held the picture of a women staring out at me. The footnote next to it read simply that this image was a self-portrait of Diego’s wife artist Frida Kahlo.
Well I took a long look at her. She had black big eyes and she stared straight at me. No flinching, no pastel colors of Cassette. Just dead on looking down into my soul with eyes that burned bright. I felt pride and strength and courage in those eyes. Courage also, that I could feel as if she were a warrior radiating a determination that defied my senses.
I was chronically ill most of my childhood and there was something else in those eyes I recognized. Pain, the pain sickness brings on and fills your body up with. I had dark eyes and I looked at her and saw something in me.
Her eyebrows were painted by her own hand as growing together creating her famous uni-brow. It was too strange for me to understand why she did this. Her cloths reflected a culture I knew nothing about but I liked her jewelry. She made me stop and look and feel and I knew she was important for me to meet this way. However I did not have a clue why.
I wanted to read more about her life and alas nothing more was said about her in the book. The Librarian feeling my need to fill myself up with women artists continued her hunt. She looked for more about Frieda but had no luck. I had to be content that she had found a thin thread to give me. As time went on I forgot about Frida and almost gave up being an artist entirely. Yet When I would see her again at the age of thirty I did at least know her name.
Finding Saint Frieda
My husband and I had started a business of taking small groups of people on tours of ancient archeological ruins in Mexico and then later into Honduras and Guatemala. To do this work we would do advance scouting trips to new areas to check out where our next trip would be traveling too. On this particular day our guide had stopped at a weaver’s village for us to check out. It was on the way to other archeological ruins we were going to look at. It seemed like a nice break from riding through the countryside and allowed us to stretch our legs.
Because our guide understood that I was an artist he thought I would respond to the peoples work in this village. He was right, I quickly fell in love with the town and the artwork I saw was simply amazing.
It was a village of rug weavers that took wool and wove magic into them. They could create any picture you could imagine in those rugs. With tufts of beige wool they layered in color dyed threads that formed ancient scenes and modern ideas. Without the Internet this had created a thriving international business for the whole village. They prospered and were proud people.
As we slowly walked from home to home to look at the rugs they sold. We would often passed through living areas in the weavers house’s to get to the workrooms. I observed that every house had a shrine table in the living space and a smaller separate one in the studios. They fascinated me as I could see they were very personal to each family,
I started taking longer looks at these altars. It usually was comprised of a table that would have statues on them. Usually there was the Madonna and often several other kinds statues of Mary that I at the time did not understand. Jesus was also there either on or off the cross, but present. Then pictures of family members in small frames decorated the surface. Locks of Grandmother’s hair were in tiny frames next to ancient brown photos. Pictures of children grown and Grandchildren were aplenty.
Then various saints were represented through holy cards and statues. Color was all around giving it a robust feeling. Candles glowed in votives in various kinds of glass holders. Sometimes with colorful pictures on the sides of the glass of holy saints and sometimes plain ones. Adding to the mix were bright paper flowers and real flowers and dead flowers all on the same table surface. Then to top it off tiny colored Christmas lights hung over the whole creation. Often blinking and adding an extra dimension of cheer.
It was festive and haphazard to my eye. Yet as I examined each alter I saw they had a real purposefulness to them. They were holy and filled with the personal and the divine. They were about family, love and sacred intent for the well being of the family.
There was one picture that appeared on the altars from house to house. They were haunting self portraits of Frida Kahlo. Not always the same size or the same painting but they were always present. I recognized her at once. The librarians face coming back to me as she opened that book of long ago to show me the prize of her search.
Frida’s face adorned the alters from one house to the next. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore and I asked my guide why does she appear on these altars the families have built. He asked a women weaver. I could see her collecting her thoughts she answered with care and took some time to explain it to me. I waited patiently for the translation. She seemed to really be pouring her heart out. To my frustration our guide said “They got calendars one year and that is were the pictures came from.”
He stopped talking like that was it! The weaver had taken quite of bit of time to tell me the story of why Frida was appearing on the altars. Yet my guide reduced the whole conversation to one sentence. Over the days traveling with him and my Husband, Conrad and I had gotten to know and respect him. I thought of him as a friend by now so I startled him when I forcefully asked him to take his time and really explain to me what the women weaver had said.
I told him it was very important to know what this weaver really had to tell me. The weaver sensing my frustration with our interpreter and stared fiercely at him also. Seeing we were both serious about this he switched gears and he collected his thoughts. He asked her more questions. Then the story finally began to come out. What the women said touched me deeply. It had greater implications than I would have thought at the time. It moved me and moves me still when I think about it.
The weaver said, “Frida is our Saint.” Owning her personally with that statement. Pulling her arms inward to her heart, her breast. “ Like a Saint she suffered in a broken body. She suffered because of her unfaithful husband. She suffered that she could have no children of her own. Her spine was broken when she was a girl and it never healed.”
“Yet through all this pain she painted. She painted her life, her joy and her suffering. Like a saint, love burned in her. Life burned in her and she prevailed. She is one of our own, an artist, and a woman. It doesn’t matter that the Church doesn’t acknowledge her as a saint. We know who she really is and we honor her by placing her on our Alter.”
“Like everyone on our alter we ask for protection and love and good health for our family both living and dead. For the dead watch over us, their Soul’s never die. I place corn meal on the table to feed my ancestors. Frida’s spirit is welcome at our alter and in our house and studio. Her artistic ways will help us in our weaving. Then she said again more passionately hands flying, Frida is our Saint and then loudly "We love her.”
I vowed to myself right then to find out more about her and her life. I also wanted to understand about the concept of saints.
So what is a Saint?
When I got back home I contacted several Catholic friends to give me the low down on Saints 101. As I was a former Lutheran we did not particularly go in for Saints in general. They explained that there were saints that through just being so devoted and devoid of sin they were honored with the title.
Then there were the sinners that just lived on the dark side till they got the call. This conversion set them on the straight and holy path. Living in so much sin only made them more powerful as a newly dedicated follower of God.
Then there were the martyrs, those men and women who stood up to non-believers and paid with their lives. Often tormented and tortured they ultimately died rather than denouncing their faith. This ultimate sacrifice made them an excellent candidate for being a Saint.
I started to get it why Frida was a popular saint for my weaver’s community in Mexico. She was all these things and more. Her suffering was acute and her joy ecstatic and blissful.
I learned that Frida’s husband was an atheist. So then Frida must have been this too, right? Yet she collected sacred prayer tablets and hung hundreds in her house. She painted a famous work that shows her cradled in the arms of a Mexican Goddess. The mysterious figure holding Frida is wearing a mask from Teotihuacán an ancient sight known for worshipping a Great Goddess. The Sacred Feminine is shown suckling her to her breast. So what was really going on? Who was the atheist and who was the true believer?
If art was Frida's faith she was devote. If painting was her way of praying she prayed constantly with reflection and power. No matter what happened to her she would not renounce her faith, her art. She lost her leg to an amputation at one point and had her spine operated on 30 times. Yet when her body was dying she had herself carried to a gallery dressed in her finery. Propped up in a bed to receive all her guest for her one women show. She laughed and drank and sang with everyone with great joy and happiness. She died in triumph her spirit and her faith never destroyed but left burning brightly. The Real Deal!
Shortly after I came home I left again for L.A to my friend Judy Patch. She told me of a magnificent art show that was being held at the Los Angeles County Art Museum. The show was called simply Mexico and it contained art from its ancient history to the present. We set out to see it and I loved connecting the masterpieces of the ancient world of the Maya and the Olmec and Teotihuacán’s.
I still had never seen an original of Frida’s work. I had no idea that any of her work was there in this show. I rounded a corner entering into a large gallery. Three paintings were hanging together in one room of the show.
I remember vividly first seeing a small painting of a deer with a women’s head attached to the body. The deer was shot with arrows and a tear fell from the lovely women’s face. I spontaneously started to cry with tears running down my face. I couldn’t help it, I quite simply felt the women’s pain for it still pulsed in the work. I felt Frida’s pain because the women’s face attached to the deer’s body was that of Frida Kahlo.
I would learn later that Frida painted the wounded deer painting because she was in great physical pain. Her spine caused her great suffering because it had healed in a broken pattern. That energy was put into the painting as a way of coping with it. Shortly after she painted it she would meet a surgeon who greatly relieved her suffering for sometime with a successful operation.
This response happened so spontaneously that I was shocked at my own behavior. I moved to the next painting, it was of Frida’s haunting face looked directly at me. Dark black monkey’s clung to her neck and her black eye brows grew together. Her eyes were clear and dark and seem to look right into my soul. I was actually only a foot away from Frieda’s canvases. I could not really believe it; at last I could see the real deal.
I stood back and looked at all three works. My emotions were running high. My Midwestern control had dissolved. I was vulnerable and open I understood what the women in the weaver’s village had been telling me. I also understood that Frida had put herself in her work. Like a religious icon that is said to possess special powers. I felt the power in those paintings that could fill me with pain or with healing. I got one of my greatest gifts from her at that moment. As a painter, I too could pour my energy into my artwork and make my painting become alive.
This insight was my gift and I have used it ever since. I had gone to a place I did not know I could reach through a work of art, till that moment. Now I could do the same with my own work and the path was before me. I could infuse my work with life and meaning and move others that see it.
Not just see it but feel it the way I had felt Frida's life force in her work. I had finally found my inspiration of a women artist I had been looking for since I was sixteen. I lingered looking and feeling reluctant to leave those pulsing paintings on the museum wall. I eventually left the physical building but that experience lingers in me even today.
A Saint’s Resurrection
I will leave you with one last Frida story. To understand it you must know something of a celebration held in Mexico on November 2 each year. It is called the Day of the Dead. The Mexican people take this day to prepare elaborate dishes of food, collect flowers and candles and go out to the cemeteries.
The people decorate the graves of loved ones that have died. Making an alter of great color and beauty on top of the actual grave. It is thought on this day that the veil is especially thin and those who we loved can be and communicated with once again. The festivity’s include staying up all night communicating with your loved ones Soul. For they are not dead of course but living on the other side of the veil. It is a time to celebrate with sugar skeletons and humor and joy.
It is a fiesta not about death but about eternal life and how love never dies but keeps us connected. To my western mind I at first had difficulty understanding why something so serious as death was greeted with a festival. Then I gradually understood this celebration day is all about the Soul’s return and not about death, but love.
To the western mind what follows could seem morbid. However these are all people who have been to the Festivals of the Day of the Dead their whole lives. Frida on July 13th (my Birthday) 1954 at the age of 47 died and when the funeral was over they took her body to be cremated at an open-air cemetery. So it was normal for them. Her body was placed in a furnace that had a window in it. Many people had come to celebrate her life. It was the custom for people to stay and watch the cremation. Diego and the others stood watching in silence. As the fire was lit suddenly Frieda’s body sat up, her eyes opened and her body glowing in intense light.
They all gasped and everyone started saying “ Is she alive!” But no
she was not physically alive. Yet she was filled with such intense light and energy she glowed. Her spirit was vividly present giving everyone one last surprise before her Soul left this earth. Everyone felt her spirit as being present one last time.
Reflecting on that story I ask you. You tell me if that is not the way a
saint would die. Gone in a blaze of light and fire, passion and bliss filling everyone in awe and wonder.
I add one more thought for you to consider. It is never to late for us
then find our passion and or what gives us bliss. Take your suffering that life gave you and use it to tell your story through creativity. If you’re holding back as I so often did before I meet Frida, Jump in! Find your voice and live, let nothing hold you back, really live your life to the full.
Make what you create infused with life and reveal the magic that is
in your unique Soul.
To Saint Frida’s I say “ Para Vida Frida” you are my inspiration today
and forever!
