March 21, 1983

8:00 P.M.

Oh, did I have a marvelous day! I went shopping in Viejo San Juan. I shopped for about 3 hours in and out of the little stores. It was such a hot sunny beautiful day. At about one in the afternoon I made the long, tiring walk to my father’s office. We shared a salad lunch with Annie. Then Arturo and I went to pick up a dummy from a commercial artist for his magazine proposal. Then we came back to Old San Juan and went for drinks. We played Pac-man and afterwards called on a friend who unfortunately wasn’t home. Her name is Amanda and I wanted to meet her because Arturo says she belongs to the Bohemian class in Old San Juan. On the way back, we met another friend of my father’s named Gloria de Duncan who teaches painting at Liga de Arte. She invited us inside her home and I suddenly became alive. She lives in one of the old, old homes in Old San Juan. Her house was enormous. Well, the rooms were. It had its own indoor patio, a wine cellar, an upstairs library, a roof terrace and all sorts of nooks and crannies and it was decorated absolutely marvelously! Just, just gorgeous! Oh, I am so thankful to have met this woman. She is an artist, a painter. She was born in Bogota, Colombia and became an anthropologist and then married one from the Midwest in the United States. She has an eleven year old daughter named Vanessa who is totally bilingual. Vanessa is a musician and last summer went to China, Japan, Boston, Alaska and Hawaii with the San Juan choir of which she is a member. I learned all this from talking to Gloria. I asked her everything I could think about her art. In the living room which we were sitting in, she had two paintings of hers on the wall. I asked her about them and what they mean and how she did her unique technique which was “lines.” She uses fan brushes. She showed us her notebooks of beginning sketches for her paintings and I thought that was so so neat. Now I want to be a painter! I asked her about where she got her ideas from and she said that its intuition and said that with her paintings she becomes part of the world in which her landscapes belong. She also said that as she’s painting, she develops a dialogue between herself and her medium. She was so fascinating to talk to! We went into her studio which she was regretful about it being so small for herself and she stretches her canvas on a wall. She has had her paintings transformed into tapestries and they too are beautiful. She showed us a piece of one. She supervises the manufacturing of the tapestries. I feel so fortunate to have been able to meet Gloria. She is an artist! And she was so interesting! I will never forget this experience nor her gorgeous home. I want to write a book one day call The Artist’s House of La Casa de la Artista and dedicate it to her who I may never see again. But I will always know her paintings and always be glad that I got to talk to an artist about her art. She also mentioned that she wants the work’s beholders to feel a certain mood and she uses her colors brilliantly. I felt a connection with colors and words for writers which I am. My father asked her if her paintings were abstract or were real landscapes. I think she said they were both but she doesn’t like using definite lines for her landscapes. Her work is not realistic, maybe what is known as surrealistic. I just love her work! One painting on the wall she call The Fugue. It entailed horses running to an orange stream of water but one was running away. I asked her why but she didn’t know. She was so wonderful. A real artist, sitting on her antique couch, under her own creations, surrounded by a little black dog, her daughter’s piano and all sorts of arty objects thrown about. Things which I treasure and have so few of. What a sheer delight it was for me. Now I know how I want to live.