Michele Ramirez's photostream

Painting is a joy. It is also work and I work everyday. My ethic is inspired by the rural farming community to which I was born. My grandparents grew and harvested the crops of California's Central Valley. I am the unexpected artist. My family encouraged me, nurtured my dream, and helped me to live a life contrary to the expectations of others.

I grew up surrounded by natural color fields. Crop rotations regularly presented different forms and textures, and each season brought new colors in blocks and rows. The geometric structures and planes forming the wide-open landscape of my youth have always captivated me. So too have the people inhabiting this panorama.

I have great reverence for the human form and its varied manifestations: young, old, agitated, at peace. The simplest gestures often convey a person's natural dignity. These gestures bear the weight of my compositions. Color ties them to emotion. In my paintings, elements of abstraction and formal structure are incorporated to lend ambiguity to the implied narrative of each piece and encourage the viewer to form his or her personal interpretation.

My current body of work concerns those who labor in the critical industry of agriculture in California. Drawings, prints, and paintings comprise a series intended to capture the distinctive landscape of this state and the workers who plant and harvest its crops. I hope my art allows for a different perception of people who, despite their critical role in our economy, remain largely invisible--usually viewed from a speeding car as abstract figures grouped in fields alongside California's highways and rural routes. While these subjects have been my focus in previous series, the present attention given to the issue of immigration and undocumented workers renders them particularly relevant at this time.