Acrylic on Magazine

May 7, 2014 1:49 PM

Ofelia Cleaning. Ramiro Gomez (Facebook page) (Gallery page) is an artist whose paintings at the blog Happy Hills "document[] the predominantly Hispanic workforce who work tirelessly behind the scenes to maintain the beautiful imagery of these affluent areas." He also places painted cut-outs of workers on the lawns in pricey neighborhoods.

Domestic Scene and Cirilio with a Leaf Blower struck me as two more of the really good ones.

Via Bitch Media

posted by crush-onastick (6 comments total)

The series riffing on Hockney is brilliant imitation/parody/social commentary all in one.
posted by chavenet at 2:13 PM on May 7, 2014

Here are a few early works. These images were posted just after he got started with his street art (art in context) series.
posted by cell divide at 2:28 PM on May 7, 2014

Oh, this is wild...thanks for the link...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 3:10 PM on May 7, 2014

Those cut-outs are a real-life version of something I've fantasized about while driving past a place down the road from me in rural central Virginia. It's an ostentatious McMansion built to look like an antebellum plantation house; the illusion of timeless gentility wavers only before elections, when sure as clockwork huge campaign signs go up for whichever candidate is politically farthest to the right.

I've wished I had the talent and the gall to sneak in some night to mount an installation of life-sized dark-skinned figures dressed in field-hand clothing, bent over next to the sacks of cotton they're filling. So I take my figurative hat off to Gomez for actually doing it..

A propos, Hector Tobar's novel The Barbarian Nurseries is highly recommended.
posted by Creosote at 6:30 PM on May 7, 2014

It's fun to litter.
posted by codswallop at 8:56 PM on May 7, 2014

The magazine paintings are excellent: I like the riffs on Hockney, too, but the magazine work is just...fascinating.
posted by jrochest at 8:58 PM on May 7, 2014 [1 favorite]