Las Calaveras y las Flores (Skulls and Flowers), oil on canvas. Pic © Pete Flowers 2008
Exhibition preview: Pete Flowers - Viva Los Esqueletos, Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston, January 7 2009 - February 28 2009
Pete Flowers has had interesting times with Mexico. Last year his Viva Mexico project, at the converted Lancashire barn he runs as a studio and collective workspace, saw two Mexican artists become part of his family in an intensely personal residency.
Flowers and his wife went on to address and exhibit at The Museo Universitaro Leopoldo Flores at Toluca University in a reciprocal arrangement with their South American visitors.
Skeletons Dance, mixed media on canvas. Pic © Pete Flowers 2008
Flowers wanted to immerse himself in the Mexican way of life to indulge a fascination with the country’s vision of mortality, particularly the kaleidscopic skeletons and flowers of Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, where colour and celebration burst forth in an explosive reversal of somber, Anglican notions of morbid death.
Los Esqueletos Saltandos (Skeleton Shuffle), mixed media on canvas. Pic © Pete Flowers 2008
“I had for a long time been working with the religious iconography of Buddhism and Hinduism,” he explains. “Suddenly my world was full of skeletons, flowers and South American colour.
"It swept into my paintings and I embarked on a new series of works celebrating Mexican culture and cross-referencing eastern philosophy. For me it is a new way of looking at mortality and therefore life.
“This work is a reflection of this joy, celebration, and fiesta, making the most of life while it is here.”
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