The Muralist

A beat-up Ford Aerostar pulled up below the house and honked. A man in his 70s got out and started up the steep dirt driveway. “Hello” he called out without seeing anyone. I stuck my head over the second floor railing; “hola” I replied. He was tall and thin and wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, tan shorts and a well-worn, long-sleeve dress shirt buttoned in three places. He was clean shaven except for a neatly-trimmed pencil mustache and he leaned slightly forward as he climbed the rutted driveway confidently, if slowly, in his flip flops. “I’m David, John’s caretaker. I lived in this house until last week and I left a few things behind. Do you mind if I get them?”

David at the house of faces

He collected some kitchen utensils and explained the color coding on the keys – casita (house) and bodega (storage), red for downstairs (earth) and white for upstairs (sky). He said he was also returning the van, which belonged to John, the owner of the house.

I asked him how he came to live in Los Barriles. Years earlier he drove a friend’s car down from California. An artist he knew who lived in Baja told him to bring his mural-painting supplies. The suggestion of a gringo painting murals in Mexico was absurd to him. “The place would be filled with Diego Rivera’s – like bringing coals to Newcastle.” But he found a commission in three days and stayed. “There weren’t many muralists of my caliber.”

A couple weeks later we had dinner with David at one of his favorite “cheapo restaurants.” The owner, Simone, a handsome, husky, middle-aged Mexican with a big smile, greeted David warmly. David once had a studio behind the restaurant. When he fell on hard times, Simone fed him for free. Near the entrance is a fading mural that David painted of the Sea of Cortez at night. 

Over dinner and a couple beers, David told us more of his story. In 1996, a female friend asked him to drive a loaded car to Los Barriles. He had $800 to his name and had never been to Mexico. He took two weeks to drive to southern Baja and she paid his expenses. 

He said he was classically trained as a painter and sketched everywhere he went. He painted portraits and figures and later landscapes. In all his years in Baja, he was only in the water once and that was to research a commission for a mural of a coral reef. The water was murky and his mask flooded and he was in only a few minutes, but he painted the mural.

We talked for two hours. David enlightened us about local Mexican customs, like how Mexican businessmen “…are so culturally secretive about ordinary info that they don't even realize it” and how to shake hands (softly). He explained “mal educado,” a “…terrible pejorative, muy malo, meaning that person does not have Mexican courtesy” and how to avoid it (solicitous praise).

David was asked to "correct" the fish on this mural that had been painted by someone else. He said it was more difficult than painting the mural from the beginning.

We often saw David when we drove into town. He does not own a car, so he walks everywhere. He’s fluent in Spanish and knows most of the local Mexicans from kids to grandmothers, and he knows their families and asks about their son or daughter, or their brother or sister (examples of Mexican courtesy). Of all the gringos we met in Los Barriles, he is closest to the local Mexican community.

Once when we were returning San Jose del Cabo, we passed David standing on the side of the Transpeninsular Highway at Spa Buena Vista waiting for a bus. We gave him a ride to Los Barriles. He was house-sitting in Spa and painting murals for a Mexican friend. We went back the next morning to see his work. He painted vines and birds on the walls above two large windows, and several “medallions” – a scarlet macaw with a distant waterfall, an egret in a cypress swamp and a toucan in a forest. All very realistic and quite good.

David took us down the street to the “house of faces,” a local landmark. He painted the portraits years earlier for the previous owner and they had lasted through at least one house painting. The figures included the owner’s mother and father, the owner and several figures from Mexican and world history. He used paints from the U.S. because “Mexican paint didn’t last long for outdoor murals.” He said that most of his work is in private homes and that he had painted murals up to 40 feet, but that he does not like working from ladders anymore.

House of faces, from left to right: Emilio Zapata, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Juana de Asbaje  and Benito Juárez

We took David to San Jose del Cabo on one of our trips to buy groceries. On the way down, we talked about Jared Diamond’s Collapse, which I was reading; he had read it and we had a lively discussion speculating on the fate of the U.S. society. On the trip back, we talked about President Obama’s performance and the expectations we had when he was first elected. For someone who has lived outside of the U.S. for 17 years, he closely follows U.S. politics and culture.

He lives in a converted garage with a palm frond roof just off the main street of Los Barriles. I could see blue sky between the fronds and when it rains, the roof leaks. He has a computer with an Internet connection and pursues his passions of music, literature, cooking and current events on-line. He has a small kitchen with a large, old, rusty refrigerator that he could not get into his house without removing the door. He and Rande compared their favorite Spanish dictionaries (they have the same one, although David's is tabbed and color coded) and traded dried chilies and recipes. He has a neatly-made double bed, clothes hanging from hooks along the wall, a small studio and books stacked everywhere.

We bought David industrial-strength, plastic shelves for Christmas and Rande asked him how he planned to organize his book collection. He said he had not considered organizing his books other than reference and philosophy, but he would give it some thought. He gave us a small pen-and-ink landscape of Baja with us in a kayak floating above the Sea of Cortez.

We stopped by David’s house before we returned to the U.S. in January. He had just finished discussing the location of heaven and hell with two Jehovah’s Witnesses. The shelves were decorated and full of books and he explained his system to Rande.

He wanted a picture of the three of us so I set up my tripod and camera in the yard outside his house. Always the painter, he commented on the light and shadows pointing out what was difficult to paint and what made a good composition.

“When we meet again, should we in this lifetime, you J. will not cinch the shoe laces tight, and you R. will not fear, and I will be the same…Que le vaya bien, amigos.”