Circle Game

​I recently came across an old painting I did in my early twenties.  It was my mother, in fact, who reminded me of its existence, probably because she saw an echo of that little piece in my current work. I have no memory of what I was thinking when I painted it.  I want to call it La taberna de los espíritus, one of those old nineteenth century Madrid taverns inhabited by the ghosts of those who once frequented it.  The barkeep is a phantom, as is the woman burning in the backroom.  Is that a black dove above her head?  A cross?  The bikini-clad women on the calendar, the soccer team up on the wall, the black and white linoleum floor, all of it brings back the Spain of my teenage years.  I still have a weakness for checkerboard floors, and for taverns, though now wolves and cats and lively skeletons crowd my public houses.  They seem a lot more sly and self-assured than those ghosts of yesteryear.