Nov 172022
 
British surrealist painter Bruce Sherratt lived in Jocotepec in the late 1960s

Artist and international art educator Bruce Robert Sherratt and his first wife, Lesley Jervis, a British sculptor, lived in Jocotepec at the western end of Lake Chapala, from 1968 to 1970. Prior to their arrival in Mexico, they had lived and traveled for some time in the USA. Bruce Robert Sherratt was born in Biddulph, […]

Nov 102022
 
Norman D Ford on how Ajijic changed between 1950 and 1970

Inveterate world traveler Norman D Ford (1921-2009) described Lake Chapala and Ajijic in several of his books, including in Bargain Paradises of the World (1952). By 1970, he had decided that Lake Chapala was “no longer the cheapest place in Mexico. Since 1950, about 1,500 American couples have moved into its two dreamy villages of […]

Nov 032022
 
Noted encaustic artist Alice de Boton painted in Ajijic in the early 1970s

Alice de Boton (1906-2010) started an art school in California, painted in Ajijic in the early 1970s, and continued to paint regularly until well after celebrating her 100th birthday. Born in Jaffa, Palestine, on 25 December 1906, de Boton painted from childhood. After her family moved to France, she took painting classes in Paris and […]

Oct 202022
 
Classical guitarist Philip Rosheger composed “Clear Southern Sky” in Chapala in 2008

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Philip Rosheger (1950-2013) began his musical career with childhood piano lessons before taking up the guitar in 1962. His progression as a guitarist was exceptionally rapid. By his mid-teens, he was taking master classes in Spain with José Tomás and the legendary Andrés Segovia, and his protégés, José Tomás and […]

Oct 132022
 
American ‘mural’ painter Thurston Munson had a winter studio in Chapala in the late 1980s

Thurston Wells Munson was in his eighties when he decided to have a winter studio in Chapala in 1988. Munson had already enjoyed an extraordinarily varied artistic career since first studying art in his teens. “Tee” Munson was born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, on 24 April 1906 and died there at the age of 92 on […]

Oct 062022
 
Painter and sculptor Stanley Fullerton lived in Chapala in the early 1960s

Painter, print maker and sculptor Stanley (“Stan”) Fullerton (1935-2018) lived in Chapala in the early 1960s and subsequently became a successful painter in the Santa Cruz area, California. Born in Portland, Oregon, on 19 January 1935, Fullerton had already exhibited at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco (one of the favorite venues of Beat […]

Sep 292022
 
Grant Risdon: adventurer, artist, raconteur and all-round lover of Mexico

In the early 1960s, Grant Risdon, a student at San Francisco Art Institute, lived in Chapala for some time. Risdon, a larger than life character, became friends with guitarist Jim Byers, and the two men rented rooms in El Manglar, the extensive lakeside estate in San Antonio Tlayacapan. Scott Hampson, who visited his half-sister Beverly […]

Sep 222022
 
The wonderful paintings and drawings of Luis Sahagun Cortes (1900-1978)

According to his birth certificate, painter and art educator Luis Sahagún Cortés was born in the town of Sahuayo, Michoacán, on 20 November 1900 (and not on 20 May as stated in some online biographies). His parents were well educated: his mother (Petra Cortés, or Cortéz as on his birth certificate) was a teacher and […]

Sep 152022
 
Classical guitarist Jim Byers painted El Manglar in 1961

Sometimes amateur artists paint something close to unique. Jim Byers, born in about 1940, first visited Lake Chapala in 1960 after graduating from Berkeley High School, California. He remained in Mexico for three years before returning north to study for a degree in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. For part of this […]

Sep 082022
 
Sarah Hunt Shearer married, honeymooned and painted at Lake Chapala in 1941

Sarah Hunt Shearer was born on 30 November 1919 and raised in Buffalo, New York. Her parents—Dr. Augustus Shearer, the director of the Grosvenor Library in Buffalo, and Inez Shearer, an artist—lived in Buffalo but also had a summer home in the village of South Wales, New York. Sarah graduated from The Park School in […]

Aug 252022
 
Art Mystery: Who is 'daniel,' the artist responsible for these drawings of Lake Chapala?

Six small (postcard size) pen and ink drawings of Lake Chapala came into my possession a year or two ago. Their quality is undeniable (see the two shown below), but I have yet to identify the artist. They are believed to date from 1968. All six line drawings are signed ‘daniel’ (all lower case): If […]

Aug 042022
 
Artist Herbert Rhodes lived in Ajiic in the early 1960s

Painter Herbert (Herb) Rhodes, the fourth husband of calendar artist and illustrator Zoe Mozert, lived in Ajijic in the early 1960s. Rhodes, who had been married previously, married Mozert in 1958; the couple divorced two years later, but remained good friends and art companions. Little is known about Rhodes’ background, early life or education. Six […]

Jul 212022
 
Zoë Mozert: from blonde bombshell pin-up girl to hugely successful calendar artist

American pin-up girl and painter Zoë Mozert (1907-1993) lived and exhibited her artwork at Lake Chapala in the 1960s. Mozert (birth name Alice Adelaide Moser) was born in Colorado Springs on 27 April 1907 and began painting at the age of four. After the family moved to Pennsylvania, Zoë attended Fairfax Hall, a prestigious private […]

Jul 142022
 
Portraitist Richard Kitchen lived at Lake Chapala in the 1970s

The renowned Hollywood portraitist Richard Kitchen lived in San Antonio Tlayacapan in the 1970s. Born in England, the details of Kitchen’s early upbringing and education are currently unknown. But by the 1940s he was already well known as a portrait painter in California. For example, the Los Angeles Times reported in December 1943 that Mrs […]

Jun 302022
 
Californian journalist Vida Shepard spent several winters at Lake Chapala in the mid-1950s

Vida Hills Shepard (1885-1972) was a journalist who spent several winters in Chapala in the mid-1950s. Shepard was a regular columnist for The Chico Enterprise-Record in California, and several of her columns make reference to her multiple visits to Chapala. She first visited in late 1954, writing in an early column how she had rented […]

Jun 162022
 
Florida-based artist Mona Jordan and her 1961 “Tarascans, Ajijic” painting

Mona Jordan (1908-1995), a multi-talented and much traveled artist, exhibited a painting titled “Tarascans, Ajijic” in Florida in 1961. Gladys “Mona” Lynch Jordan was born on 12 November 1908 at West Point, Orange County, New York, and died at the age of 86 on 28 September 1995 in Annandale, Fairfax County, Virginia. Her remains are […]

Jun 092022
 
After visiting Ajijic in 1978, Taylor Caldwell signed a multi-million-dollar deal for two novels

Taylor Caldwell (1900-1985), a prolific author of best-selling novels, spent two weeks at the Touch of Eden health spa in the Hotel Real de Chapala in 1978. At the time of her visit, Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell (her birth name) was married to Robert Prestie and going by her married name. Lake Chapala Artists […]

May 262022
 
Rowena Girault Kirkpatrick painted and gave art classes in San Antonio Tlayacapan in the early 1970s

Rowena Girault was a prolific painter and sculptor. Multi-faceted, multi-talented, and almost entirely self-taught, she moved to San Antonio Tlayacapan (with her husband, Frank) in the late 1960s and spent the remainder of her life there. Rowena Katherine Girault was born to Peter Girault and Catherine Price in Chicago on 24 December 1914. The 1920 […]

May 122022
 
Julian Pulido: talented Ajijic artist who died tragically young

Julián Pulido Pedrosa was one of the group of talented artists who formed the Jovenes Pintores de Ajijic (Young Painters of Ajijic) in 1977. Tragically, a decade later, Ajijic-born Pulido died on the highway between Tuxcueca and Tizapán el Alto in mysterious circumstances, while still a young man, not yet thirty years of age. He […]

Apr 072022
 
Howard Fryer and “El Nitty Gritty,” his provocative memoir of thirty years at Lake Chapala

Howard Fryer’s memoir, El Nitty Gritty, published in 2010, is perhaps the most deliberately provocative account of life at Lake Chapala ever written. Who was Howard Fryer, and what did he write? Who was Howard Fryer? Born in Reading, UK, on 11 March 1941, Fryer was only a young child when he moved with his […]

Mar 242022
 
Artist-explorer Tobias Schneebaum began his worldwide adventures in Ajijic in the late 1940s

Tobias (“Toby”) Schneebaum (1922-2005) was a gay artist, author, adventurer and activist, best known for living among, and documenting, the Amarakaeri people of Amazonian Peru and the Asmat people of the southwestern part of the island of New Guinea. Before these trips into the tropical jungle, Schneebaum had lived in Ajijic for several years, and […]

Mar 102022
 
Charles Kaufman dedicated his novel "Fiesta in Manhattan" to the people of Ajijic

The distinguished American screenplay writer Charles Kaufman (1904-1991) was in his mid-twenties when he lived for several months in Ajijic in 1929, with his girlfriend, Edith Huntsman. A decade later, he dedicated his first and only novel – Fiesta in Manhattan – “To the good people of Ajijíc.” (Note that Ajijic is normally written without […]

Feb 242022
 
Do you own a painting by Peg Kittinger?

Peg Kittinger is one of the mystery artists associated with Lake Chapala. “Mrs L B (Peg) Kittinger” was an artist and art teacher who lived in Chapala for about nine years, from 1955 to 1964. Her address in Chapala in 1955 was Morelos #181, though she apparently later had a home in Chula Vista. Hazel […]

Feb 102022
 
Helen Creighton, Canadian folklorist, visited Chapala at about the same time as D H Lawrence

Mary Helen Creighton, usually known simply as Helen Creighton, was born into an upper-class family in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on 5 September 1899, and became one of Canada’s most prominent folklorists. Her career spanned sixty years, and she gained an international reputation in the field. After gaining a diploma in music from McGill University in […]

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