Street Art, Oaxaca, Mexico

I can't quite put my finger on why it holds such appeal for me, but I very much love street art.  Maybe it is the big canvases upon which the artist works.  Maybe it is the day and night access.  You can go to see street art on Christmas.  It is always open.  And it is free.  No charge to enjoy it. 

This is the entrance to the studio of the master carvers in the Fuentes family.  I love it because it is brightly painted, not too complicated, and it gives the passerby a sense of what they are about to enter, which is a workshop of people creating fantastical animals, some of them imaginary, some of them replicas of things that exist in life, but all of them beautifully painted. 

Oaxaca is a city with many artists, and some cook things going on in art.  The churches in the region have been extensively renovated and the repainting of their interiors is nothing short of spectacular.  The artists who do that restoration are doing a very different art than those who are painting the sides of buildings in terms of their message and their appeal, but the desire to paint and paint big may be a shared one.