In 1923 a little train ran from Guadalajara, Mexico, to Chapala, but only twice a week. One of those excursions carried two young Americans, trained at the Art Institute of Chicago, to the small village to paint. Red-tiled roofs on pale pastel houses bordering a great silvery lake greeted the two. In the next four years the lives of the artists—and the bride one lured south from California—pulsated to the beat of a Mexico few Americans knew. This sprightly memoir by one of those young painters captures the tone and spirit of their adventures. Everett Gee Jackson’s keen eye and quiet humor provide an intriguing view of the people and places he knew at that time—a time long gone—and of the making of an artist. From the widow’s parrot that Senor Martinez taught to curse, to the murals of Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco; from burro rides over winding mountain trails, to paintings of straw-thatched huts rising on stilts out of a lake; from breakfasts in small native restaurants, to learning to see colors without names and buildings that defy the need to be balanced and static, Jackson adroitly weaves together the details of physical, cultural and artist’s-eye landscapes. The graceful sketches and lush paintings reproduced in the book embody both the scenes of Mexico he describes and the sensibilities of the artist.

Burros and Paintbrushes: A Mexican Adventure (Wardlaw Books)

History

Jackson, Everett Gee

Americas

Texas A&M University Press

When artist Everett Jackson and his young wife, Eileen, crossed the border from Mexico in 1927 after he had painted there for four years, they realized that Mexico had bewitched them. Never again would they see life quite the same way as the Americans around them, and never would they be able to stay out of Mexico for more than a few months at a time. Almost immediately upon settling in San Diego, where he would teach art and she would write a newspaper column, they began making painting trips back into Mexico. At first they explored the remote, unsettled areas in the border state of Baja California, but over the next fifty years they visited all parts of Mexico, seeing sites that few Americans have ever viewed and others which, though more popular, few have seen with Jackson's clarity and sympathy. The Jacksons took many roads south--meeting a man whose mule could pull their stuck car out of the sand as soon as they pulled the mule out of a well, revisiting old friends from Chapala and Ajijic, climbing pyramids with the descendants of their ancient builders, exploring the subtleties of the sculpture and architecture of Palenque, and walking contemplatively over the great, twenty-five-foot-tall Tlaloc of Coatlinchan as it reclined on site before it was moved to a museum in Mexico City. To the artist's original goal of capturing the spirit of Mexico in his paintings, he added those of fathoming the use of space in pre-Columbian art and, eventually, of traveling the long and difficult, but picturesque and mysterious, road to the village of Comondu. The understatedly fascinating adventures on these journeys are captivatingly illustrated by Jackson's own distinctive drawings and told with an artist's eye to detail and a gentle man's warm humor. Artists and art historians will appreciate his reflections on the pre-Columbian art and colonial and Indian architecture he saw. People with an interest in Mexico will enjoy his accounts of the places and people he knew before development and tourism changed them forever. And those who want to love mankind will treasure the excuse his adroit observations provide for doing so.

It's a Long Road to Comondú: Mexican Adventures since 1928 (Wardlaw Books)

An exceptional copy; fine in an equally fine dw. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new; 8vo 8 - 9 tall; 250 pages; Description: xii, 250 p. , 2 p. of plates : ill. (some col. ) ; 24 cm. Subjects: Jackson, Everett Gee (1900-1995) --Artists --United States --Biography

Goat Tails and Doodlebugs: A Journey Toward Art

San Diego State Univ Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Jackson, Everett Gee. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Jackson, Everett Gee

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Jackson, Everett Gee. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Burros and Paintbrushes: A Mexican Adventure (Wardlaw Books)

It's a Long Road to Comondú: Mexican Adventures since 1928 (Wardlaw Books)

Goat Tails and Doodlebugs: A Journey Toward Art